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Photographer: Michael Herrick
Taken: June 22, 2009
Caption: Mine Hill During Its Heyday
Additional Description: Roxbury’s experiment with the iron and steel industry was short, but intense. The Shepaug Spathic Iron and Steel Co. greatly expanded the extraction of ore at Mine Hill in 1865 with $300,000 in capital. A Donkey Trail was built to provide access to multiple mines nearly a mile up the hillside and before long, a pair of roasting ovens, a blast furnace, a steel puddling furnace, a rolling mill and more than a half dozen buildings crowded a gentle slope at the base of the hill.

When the smelter formed a “salamander” at its first firing in 1867, the company had to be refinanced with $1 million and was renamed the American Silver Steel Company. That company moved the steel-making to Bridgeport before it reorganized and changed its name to the Shepaug Iron Company in 1872. An attempt to change the smelter from cold to hot air blasting to improve its efficiency also failed that year
Submitted: July 5, 2009, by Michael Herrick of Southbury, Connecticut.
Database Locator Identification Number: p69551
File Size: 0.456 Megabytes

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