Plumbe Forge: Iron, Mules, and the Canal That Killed It

Not far north of here stand the remains of the Plumbe Forge, an iron-working operation built by Doctor John Plumbe. The forge produced what ironworkers called blooms, rough masses of worked iron hammered from pig iron carried up from the Bald Eagle Valley by mule train. It was hard, expensive work hauling raw material over the mountains and then hauling finished iron back out again.

The Pennsylvania canal system, built in the eighteen thirties, seemed to promise cheaper transport, but the economics never penciled out. The cost of getting products from the forge down to the canal landing proved too steep, and the forge eventually closed for good. What survives today are the stone foundations and ruins of a brief industrial ambition, one of dozens of small Pennsylvania forges that flourished and failed in the decades before the railroad changed everything.