A century and more ago, a section of East Canaan, Connecticut was a noisy, smoky industrial area. The hills for miles around were stripped of their timber. Plumes of smoke dotted the landscape, where charcoal makers burned the wood to make fuel for the iron blast furnaces.
The hills of Northwestern CT were rich in iron ore. Industrialists like Ethan Allen built great forges on the area's rivers as early as 1832. Water power was tapped for power for bellows that blasted air into the forges, with their soaring stone chimneys. The iron had to be smelted out of mined rock, which required heating for long periods to about 900 degrees F.
The Great Iron Age and a land reclaimed
Mills and homes for migrant workers, mostly Italian and Irish, sprang up in concert along the Blackberry River and Lower Road. Here and elsewhere, the iron was made into nails and farming tools, anchors, cannons and cannonballs used in the Revolutionary War and train wheels. There were as many as 43 furnaces in what was known as the Salisbury Iron district. It came to be called the Great Iron Age, not just for the scope of iron production, but for the ways in which it changed the world.
The last of the three furnaces in East Canaan closed in 1923. Go there today and one will find a country road that, save for a limestone quarry, is peaceful and as green as anywhere. The workers' home have been maintained as family neighborhoods. The remains of one furnace are surrounded by a vineyard. The Beckley Furnace site has become a park and a learning center. It is owned by the state, but there are no restrictions or fees. The public is welcome to stroll, picnic, fish, swim and enjoy along with the locals who are drawn by its charm, which includes the nearby by dam which supplies a waterfall most of the year.
A majestic monument
The light gray stone of the Beckley Furnace shines nearly white in the sun. It is actually the chimney, or stack that was once inside the furnace structure and not visible from the outside. It was originally built. 30-feet square at its base and to a height of 32 feet. When the Forbes and Adam Iron Co. was later purchased by the Barnum and Richardson Co., the stack was raised to 40 feet, making it among the tallest in the area.
After it was closed, the furnace was left to molder, and was scavenged for iron and brick during World War II. In 1946, a civil engineer developed a plan to preserve the site as an important part of history. The state purchased the property. The furnace was designated as the state's first and only industrial monument. In 1978, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Saving history
But that's as far as it went. Until 1996, when a group of local historians and citizens, all volunteers, formed the Committee to Preserve Beckley Furnace. All four sides of the stack was bulging from water infiltration and it appeared ready to crumble. They secured a $250,000 state grant. The furnace was stabilized and capped to preserve it. An archeological assessment was done one can now walk inside the furnace to view cross sections of its brick and stone construction.
One fine dam
In the summer of 2011, the dam was also restored and preserved. With the urging of what is now called the Friends of Beckley Furnace, a new dam was poured behind the original stones, which were repaired, so that it looks just as the original. Atop a new spillway is an overlook onto the dam and what remains of one of the old turbine wells. A huge pipe that fed first a waterwheel, then the turbines, protrudes from the dam just below the spillway.
The Friends also convinced the state to purchase a former home on the site; originally the Barnum and Richardson paymaster's building. It is set up as an educational center and remains under restoration. One may go inside the brick enclosed vault, where windows were later added to make it into a bedroom. What may have been the original steel safe has been installed there, found buried on a farm in upstate New York.
Lower Road runs between two state highways, Routes 7 and 44. That, and directional signs on the highways make the Beckley site easy to find.
The site is manned on Saturdays during the summer by those with expert knowledge of its history. Recently-added informational signs allow for comprehensive self-tours.
For more information go to beckleyfurnace.org.
Karen Bartomioli - Karen Bartomioli has been writing for a weekly newspaper for more than 19 years, taking a catch more bees with honey approach. Living, ...
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