Falling Creek Ironworks: America's First Iron Furnace
Near Richmond, Virginia
Three years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, the Virginia Company of London was already building what would become the first integrated iron production facility in English North America, right here where Falling Creek meets the James River.
Construction began in sixteen nineteen. The Virginia Company was desperate to reduce England's dependence on Swedish and Spanish iron, and the woods and waterpower of the Virginia tidewater seemed purpose-made for iron smelting. They sent over skilled ironmaster John Berkeley, a Gloucestershire man experienced in the trade. Berkeley surveyed the creek, pronounced it ideal, wood, water, mines, and stone, and promised his London backers that by Easter of sixteen twenty-two he would be delivering large quantities of high-quality iron.
He was almost right about the timing. The blast furnace was completed in late sixteen twenty-one, and limited production appears to have begun in early sixteen twenty-two. Then came March twenty-second.
On that morning, the paramount chief of the Powhatan Confederacy, Opechancanough, coordinated a simultaneous series of attacks on English settlements across Virginia. The assault on Falling Creek was total. Twenty-seven people were killed, including Berkeley himself. The furnace was destroyed. The tools were thrown into the creek. Whatever iron may have been produced there was lost.
Three subsequent attempts were made in the sixteen hundreds to restart the ironworks. All failed. The site lay quiet for centuries. Archaeological work has confirmed the furnace location, and today Falling Creek Ironworks Park preserves the grounds. The creek still runs. The promise of Easter sixteen twenty-two was never kept, but the ambition behind it reshaped how England thought about its American colonies.
