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LOCATION - Pequest Furnace Rd Townsbury, N.J. (Warren County)
The Pequest Furnace played a big part in the Industrial Revolution along with dozens of other sites in Northwest New Jersey. However, the part played here has been left for years, all that is left are pieces of a puzzle hidden in the Warren County woods.
The slag pile (PHOTO 1) and, probably, the core from the furnace's final blow-out. At the edge of the woods, there sits a small, gray, alien hill, a pile of what is known as “slag” (PHOTO 2)
So begins the mystery and rediscovery of the Pequest Furnace and its rise and fall. It was a time when this sleepy part of Warren County was known for its industrialization. It was the age of railroads and iron, fueled by anthracite coal from the fields of northeast Pennsylvania. A few miles south is the town of Oxford, which was known as an industrial center for well over a century. There they had a charcoal furnace which was built before the American Revolution. Later, William Henry successfully applied a hot blast to the smelting of iron ore at the Oxford Furnace, distinguishing it as the first of its kind. In the 1840s, the Furnace passed into the hands of Charles, George, and Selden Scranton, for whom the Pennsylvania city is named.
Increasing demand for products suggested that iron furnaces would do well to adapt to the use of coal as fuel, rather than charcoal. Coal burned much hotter but also bore much more weight on top, so the layered stack of fuel, limestone flux and ore could rise much higher in the furnace. Plus, there weren't many trees left to make charcoal; these hills were bare.
The brothers invested in railroads to deliver the coal, ensuring the longevity of their furnace at Oxford. The commercial complex at the Pequest Furnace in 1905(PHOTO 3). The cornerstones of what was probably an office building at the furnace(PHOTO 4).
The Pequest Furnace was constructed in 1873-74 to join the Oxford operations in smelting the abundant ores pulled from dozens of mines in the hills surrounding the river valley near what is now Buttzville. Here, the furnace, company offices, stock house, air pump houses and busy railroad interchanges churned out massive quantities of iron product, primarily nails and bar stock that was forged into parts.
Blair's railroad delivered fuel to the furnace and took product from the furnace to market. The Lehigh and Hudson RR later served the furnace from a lower elevation along the Pequest River, linking it from Middletown, NY to Phillipsburg and Philadelphia.
During the 18th and19th centuries, Northwest New Jersey was home to numerous anthracite furnaces, most of which, like Oxford's, were located within pre-existing settlements. At Pequest, company houses rose solely to support the furnace and disappeared quickly as the industry declined in the early 1900s. Today, a quick look at the hill where the complex once stood reveals scarcely a hint of the bustling commerce once hosted there; no markers or monuments, just the abandoned railbeds cut through the hillside and rusty bridges over the river.
You can still find bits of pig iron, the raw iron product from the furnace. The bridge leading into the woods is an early 20th Century incarnation of the original bridge built by the Lehigh and Hudson River RR to compete with Blair. Walking over the bridge and left up the hill are lumps of stuff that looks like lava from a volcano; chunks of brick half buried in the dirt. Then suddenly there are large cut stones jutting from the ground. These are the cornerstones for one of the main buildings at the furnace. Strewn throughout the area is that lava-like stuff.
Any smelting process required purification, and the ore here was abundant, but not particularly pure. Limestone, also abundant in this ground, was the agent used for sucking out the impurities. This lava likeness is called slag; the remains of the limestone flux that floated to the top of the bath, light and porous from air passing through it. Connected to the main line, are tracks that were built to load material from the casting and stock house and to escort the constant flow of waste away from the furnace.
Here and there on the massive pile of slag lie large chunks of iron. Once in a while the furnace would cool to the point where iron would solidify before it could be poured off in its molten form. These events were bad news; the furnace had to be dismantled and the fused core broken into pieces that could be loaded and taken away. These iron chunks on the slag heap are pieces of tear-downs. Proximity to major markets, the coming of the railroads, and easy access to rich veins of ore allowed the smelting operations to prosper at Pequest, Oxford, and all over the New Jersey highlands, into the early 1990s.
Mining gradually became more expensive as surface supplies of ore were depleted, requiring deep shafts and tunnel complexes hundreds of feet deep into the earth. When open pit mining in the vast Mesabi Range in Minnesota began, local mines became non-competitive. And the technology for making stock for cast products and wrought iron was quickly being overtaken by the requirements for making steel. The industry moved west.
That brings us back to the big brown rock. After the furnace at Pequest was blown out, everything of value was stripped and taken for scrap. The place was liquidated, except for those things that had no use. This humongous lump was probably the end for the Pequest Furnace. One day they loaded up the re-fused core of iron, sulfur, phosphorous and limestone and dumped it in the field where it sits today.
**TO CLAIM THIS CACHE- No need to wait for conformation from CO (I trust you)
1) In your log, record how many were in your group.
2) Find a piece of "pig iron" and explain the difference between it and the "slag"
Have fun exploring, learning, and remember to practice CITO
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