Powered by Water

Powered by Water. Catoctin Furnace Iron Trail.

“In the summer of 1854, there was a distressing drought; and it had a marked effect upon the business of the County…The shipments of pig iron were 1,600,000, a decrease of nearly a million pounds.” , , Thomas Williams in History of Frederick County, published 1910.

, You are overlooking the emergency spillway that diverted excess water from the furnace into Little Hunting Creek. The spillway was part of an intricate system of dams, raceways, and ponds engineered to extract waterpower from the creek. The dam in the background was used to hold water until it was ready for its journey down the raceway towards the furnace, where it was poured over a water wheel that powered the bellows.

By the time the water reached the stacks, it was almost a quarter of a mi!e away from the bed of Little Hunting Creek. If the creek ran dry in the summer or froze in the winter, the furnace was forced to shut down., [Captions:] , (Top) This water wheel from Hopewell Furnace in Pennsylvania shows what the water wheel at Catoctin would have looked like., » (Right) The original Catoctin Furnace used an overshot wheel to power the bellows. Overshot wheels require a large amount of flow (volume of water) and head (height from which the water falls to the stream below) to generate power. The dams and raceways at Catoctin supplied enough flow and head for the wheel to reach its full efficiency. Overshot wheels like this one could harness over 85% of the potential energy of the falling water., (Center) Catoctin Furnace used an overshot wheel. Water spilled over the top of the wheel, filling and weighing down the buckets to make the wheel spin., « (Left) An 1885 illustration shows an example of an overshot water wheel.