The Morris Canal at Waterloo Village Historic Site is a restored 19th century canal town in Byram Township, Sussex County in northwestern New Jersey. The community was approximately the half-way point in the roughly 102-mile (165 km) trip along the Morris Canal, which ran from Jersey City, NJ across New Jersey to Phillipsburg, PA
Waterloo Village mill town possessed all the accommodations necessary to service the needs of a canal operation, including an inn, a general store, a church and a blacksmith shop (to service the mules on the canal), and a gristmill. Waterloo's geographic location would have been conducive to being an overnight stopover point on the two-day trip between Phillipsburg and Jersey City.
The Forge at Waterloo was constructed around the 1760's. "Old Andover" was the pre-Revolutionary War site later known as Waterloo Village, about 5 miles south of the present-day town of Andover. Around 1763 the Loyalist iron company of Allen & Turner erected at Old Andover an iron furnace, forge, and refinery. Andover received its name from the birthplace of Mr. Turner, which was Andover County, Hampshire, England.
The iron company mined its iron ore along a ridge a couple of miles north of where the town of Andover now lies. There they also built a furnace, grist-mill, blacksmith-shop, barn, dwellings, and a mansion for the superintendent of the iron works. The pig iron produced there was then sent to the Old Andover forge and refinery at Waterloo to be made into bars that were then transported on mules to the Delaware River for shipment or use elsewhere.
Colonial Iron Forge
The forge at Waterloo was located adjacent to the gristmill that served as the charcoal house to store the fuel for the forge. The reconstructed sawmill stands on portions of the foundations of the old forge.