Irondale

Irondale. Station 2. , The Gray's Atlas of Essex County printed in 1876 recorded the improvements made in "Irondale” after the Crown Point Iron Company built a narrow gauge railroad to carry ore from the mines to its new foundry complex on Lake Champlain. Here the path from town to the bridge crossed the new rail line., For nearly fifty years, a plank bridge supported by rock-cribbed piers had carried foot traffic and charcoal carts to homes and charcoal sheds on the far side of Putt's Creek. After 1888, when the Brooklyn Bridge opened with Crown Point iron in its suspension cables, the worker's hamlet across the pond was dubbed "Brooklyn” and the humble span, 'The Bridge to Brooklyn.", Ironville was a focal point of the Adirondack iron industry for over seventy years. As a by-product of its iron industry, Ironville became the site of the first industrial use of electricity and indirectly participated in the birth of the electric motor., In 1974, the entire hamlet of Ironville earned the designation of Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places., The Penfield Homestead Museum's properties include the Homestead, the parsonage, the church, the former Penfield farm and barns, the mill pond and the site of the Crown Point Iron Company's iron works along Putnam Creek. ,