Cornwall Iron Furnace is located in Cornwall, Lebanon County Pennsylvania and is part of the Pennsylvania Trails of History travel tour. It's the only surviving intact charcoal cold blast furnace in the western hemisphere. It was open for business from 1742 until 1883 and was one the largest iron producing plants east of the Mississippi River.
Today, Cornwall Iron Furnace stands silent. The roar of the furnace, the heat of the flames, the stench, the smoke, the brilliant, sizzling, red-hot flow of iron are gone forever. But the furnace itself, its great wheel, blowing tubs, casting sheds, and charging arch, remain.
Last year we had the opportunity to tour
Cornwall Iron Furnace and published our feature right here on the blog. Since our first feature, we've received many questions about Cornwall via email and on social media, so today...we're sharing some additional information and photographs with you. You can re-visit our original post for historical information.
Cornwall Furnace built in the year 1742 by Peter Grubb, sold by his son to Robert Coleman in 1786 and operated by him and his descendants continuously until 1883. Presented in 1932 to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania by Margaret Coleman Buckingham, great granddaughter of Robert Coleman. (info from on-site historical marker).
The living history museum is broken down into two main buildings that you can visit and tour. We decided to explore the Cornwall Iron Furnace building first and our tour guide was fantastic at giving us information. He really took his time to answer all of our questions and he had a great sense of humor to go along with it. Every time I look at the building's features...I see gothic written all over it. Check out those windows!
Your tour starts on the upper floor of the building and you work your way through the building and down. There are steps for you to use, but if you're disabled and can't do steps, you'll want to skip this tour and just do the museum tour that's located in the main (gift shop) building. From start to finish, this part of our tour took about an hour, give or take a few minutes.
We then headed into the other main building that houses the museum and the gift shop. In the museum section, it's a self-guided tour, so we were able to wonder around at our own pace which was really nice. This section is loaded with a lot of artifacts and items that were originally used at Cornwall Furnace. I recommend that you take the time to read the information plaques and markers, so that you can learn more about the items, their history and importance.
Again, you'll want to re-visit our
original travel feature to get all of the important historical information, see our original photographs and to read about our personal experience. Today, we just wanted to share some additional information and photographs with you that we didn't share with you the first time around. It's a great place to visit!
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