A Buried Story

A Buried Story. Lancaster-York Heritage Region. Today the flood plain before you appears to be untouched and sparsely settled, but from 1845 to 1900, the riverbank between Marietta and Columbia was a beehive of industrial activity., At the center of this industrial complex were eight anthracite iron furnaces, which manufactured tons of "pig iron" each year. Barges on the Pennsylvania Canal carried anthracite coal to this area from the northeastern part of the state. Enterprising ironmasters then transformed local iron ore into pig iron with the help of immigrant workers , especially German, Irish, and Welsh., Local industries became even more dynamic and productive when the Harrisburg, Portsmouth, Mountjoy, and Lancaster Railroad completed a branch from Middletown to Columbia in 1850. An elaborate transportation network of roads, canals, and railroads allowed pig iron to be shipped to local rolling mills and to markets throughout the Chesapeake Bay region., By the twentieth century, however, the local iron industry was in decline, a victim of competition with the far richer iron deposits of the Great Lakes region and the coal of western Pennsylvania. Today, the vegetation of a peaceful county park conceals most of the remains of the formerly vibrant industrial complex.