We picked this Pennsylvania park purely for its location and the fact that it had some trails we could hike. As we neared the entrance, I saw a sign for a national historical site and thought maybe we could make time to visit after we left. But it turned out that the national historical site is right in the middle of French Creek State Park so we could hike to it easily from our campsite.
As long as we remembered to wear something orange.
The Roar of the Furnace Blast and Lurid Glare of Flames
The historic site is Hopewell Furnace and Hopewell village, operated by the National Park Service. It preserves a community that centered on iron making for over 100 years, from 1771 to 1883. As we walked amid the quiet buildings and green fields, it was hard to imagine that the village once centered around a roaring inferno that operated 24 hours a day.
Fuel for the Fire
In the forest surrounding the village, crews once worked ceaselessly felling trees to produce the massive amounts of charcoal needed to fuel the blast furnace. Then colliers (also known as charcoal burners) would build stacks up to 50 feet wide and ten feet tall, cover the wood with leaves, and then top it off with dirt. They lit a fire at the bottom to heat the wood without burning it up. The goal was to distill it into charcoal. It could take over a week for a pile to produce charcoal, and charcoal burners usually had several piles going at once. They lived in primitive huts in the woods to monitor their fires.
The iron furnace consumed about 600 acres of forest every year. So many of the tree-covered hillsides we see today would have been pretty bare 200 years ago, while others were in the process of regrowing and filled with brambles and young trees. Before the Civil War, these areas of regrowth were hard to traverse, so colliers used to secretly lead groups through as part of their journey north on the Underground Railroad.
Many Jobs I Would Not Want
While I enjoy camping in my modern camper van, I would not want to live in the woods breathing in the gases that oozed out of the charcoal pyres. But I would not enjoy any of the other jobs associated with the furnace, either. I would not want to be responsible for transporting the hot charcoal in wagons which sometimes caught fire. I would not enjoy moving it into sheds to cool, and I would not enjoy shoveling it into wagons and running it down to dump into the furnace. The village was filled with unpleasant jobs, and workers were expected to stay at it 12 hours a day.
Contemporary descriptions reveal a village swirling with black charcoal dust, choked with stench of the furnace and overwhelmed by the roar of the furnace blast. At night, flames from the furnace gave a hellish glow to the sky.
Yet workers considered themselves lucky compared to their counterparts working industrial jobs in the city. Having iron ore, limestone, and wood in close proximity created a good site to produce cast iron products at a time when most goods were imported from Europe. Hopewell Furnace is a surviving example of iron-making communities that once dotted the region. During the most productive years of the furnace, it supported a village of 200-300 people.
Camping with History and an Orange Hat
This trip was my first time camping in Pennsylvania State Parks. We loved the falls trail at Rickett’s Glen and of course, in French Creek State Park, the ability to hike easily to a restored 19th Century village and industrial complex was a big plus. But both parks shared a feautre that was a bit disconcerting. The hiking trails crossed into hunting lands. This caught us by surprise, particularly in French Creek. On almost every trail I tried out, I’d suddenly run into a sign warning me to beware because I was on hunting lands.
Fortunately, we happened to have two orange baseball hats in the van, but that was completely by accident. We were not prepared to traipse through land where we could get in the way of a hunter’s shot. It was probably not the season for hunting, but I still thought the warning signs were poorly placed. I would have appreciated knowing that I was potentially placing my life in danger before I was in a position where I was actually doing so.
Next time I go to Pennsylvania, I will bring more Orioles shirts, just in case.
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If you enjoy reading about how ordinary people lived and worked in colonial America, you might be interested in my novel Restitution, set in 1774 Maryland–not too far from the iron making centers of neighboring Pennsylvania