Greenwood Furnace State Park

The iron furnaces at Greenwood dominated this otherwise rural landscape. Beginning in 1834, and for most of 70 years, one or both of the two furnaces located here brightened the night with a fiery, multi-colored glow. For miles around, wood-choppers harvested vast tracts of forest. Colliers then slow-burned the logs into charcoal. Miners dug tons of iron ore from mines nearby, and wagons loaded with limestone lumbered along rustic roads from quarries over the mountain.
So, in 1904, when the last fire went out in furnace #2, an undeniable industrial presence disappeared from this valley. The forests that now surround you slowly reappeared, aided by seedlings grown at Greenwood Nursery, established here after the furnace closed.
(Inscription under the image in the lower left) If you look carefully at this 19th century photo you will find Greenwood Furnace's stack #2 nearly enclosed by wooden buildings.
(Inscription under the image in the upper right) As this cutaway drawing shows, wooden buildings and machinery designed to fan the fire to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, always surrounded the flat-topped stone furnace. Commonly, only the stone stacks survive. The owners of Greenwood built two furnaces. The oldest (the ruin in front of you on the left) roared to life in 1834. It rose 30 feet above a 30-foot square base and operated until 1880. The second furnace (on the right) went into blast in 1867 and operated until 1904. With a daily capacity of 12 tons (compared with furnace #1's 4 to 5 tons), it ranked as one of the largest cold-blast charcoal furnaces ever built and one of the last to operate in Pennsylvania.

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