An Iron Making Complex

An Iron Making Complex. . , Finding The Ore Was Only The Beginning , The iron deposits along the Upper Hudson were rich and promising, and mining the ore and smelting it into iron were labor-intensive operations that occupied a long stretch of the Hudson River and hundreds of acres of surrounding land. A village called Adirondac was built to house the workers, and the Hudson River was dammed to generate water power to operate the equipment and transport materials in and out., Birdseye View of the Furnace Complex , The stone furnace still standing was the core of the iron-making operation, but there was much more to the complex. This artist's conception, based on written accounts from company records, shows how the furnace complex might have looked under full operation in 1855. In spite of the elaborate equipment, the furnace produced iron for only two years., Furnace Details , Ore and charcoal were transported by wagon to the top of the charging bridge. , , Lumber, milled from virgin timber at a sawmill just upriver, was used to construct the charging bridge, its massive enclosure, and the casting and wheel houses. These buildings have long since rotted away., A hoist loaded pigs onto barges for the trip down the Hudson, through Sanford Lake, to the Lower Works, then by wagon to Lake Champlain, and finally to the company foundry in Jersey City, NJ, where they were used to make steel products., The Hudson River was dammed and diverted through the wheel house to power the blast furnace equipment., A Short Life , 1849 - Construction of the New Furnace begins. , 1854 - Furnace complete at a cost of $43,000 and first fired on August 20. , 1855 - Furnace producing 10-12 tons of iron per day, operating around the clock, but transportation difficulties, lack of funds, and a national recession cause the owners to cease operations. , 1857 - Flooding destroys dams here and at Lower Works. Furnace never fired again.