Iron Mountain Furnace: 2018 LBL Geocache Challenge
Iron Mountain Furnace was built in 1855, here in Tharp, TN, on the very location of this geocache. If you look around, you can still see remnants of the stack: bricks, rocks, and slag. It was an exact duplicate of the Great Western Furnace and, unfortunately, no known photographs exist of Iron Mountain Furnace, though we know of it through historic documents and the archaeological remains.
The furnace began firing the year it was built, and produced 1,200 tons of “pig iron” in 30 weeks. The hematite ore used for production was scattered on the surface in the region surrounding the furnace. The stack once stood 42 feet high and was 10.5 feet wide. In the nearby creek, you can see many pieces of slag--the characteristic blue, green, and shiny black luster of this waste product is ubiquitous in the flowing water.
The “pig iron” (named for the method of casting in sand channels that resembled a sow nursing pigs) produced at iron furnaces in the Cumberland Valley was used to create nails, farm implements, sugar kettles, cookware, and other wrought iron products.
This cache is located amongst the cultural materials that remain from the Iron Mountain Furnace. Please keep your impacts to cultural remains to a minimum. You are looking for a orange colored watertight dry box (7” x 8” x 4”). Sign the logbook and collect one of the numbered aluminum tree tags. After you collect a tree tag from each of the 6 geocache sites, redeem them for a unique and distinctive challenge coin award at the LBL Golden Pond Visitor Center.