Driving on narrow sinuous back roads through lush, verdant forests-just a half dozen miles north of the busy Pennsylvania Turnpike-unsuspecting travelers can't help being struck by an odd-looking complex of Gothic Revival-style buildings and structures. This place, this curious collection of buildings, both large and small, appears to have been literally plucked from a far away and long ago countryside of, perhaps, England, or Scotland, maybe Wales, even Ireland. As they continue deeper into the heartland of what was once one of America's vast iron plantations, travelers begin to notice churches, homes even an entire village, built in the same picturesque style. Their journey takes them not only farther into the bucolic countryside of Lebanon County, but back through time when this very place thundered with a deafening frenzy that helped build America. Today, this place, Cornwall Iron Furnace, is quiet and peaceful. Its stack no longer belches sooty, black smoke, and its mammoth open mining pit has filled with water. The scene is mesmerizing, sometimes haunting.

Years ago, this was a small, self-contained village-nearly feudal in its hierarchy of ironmaster and his workers. Amid the gently countryside of the Susquehanna Valley, with its iron-laden, dense sprawling forest, and abundant rivers and streams, it was perfectly situated to become one of the country's earliest and most productive ironworks. Cornwall Iron Furnace holds an intriguing story that spans two centuries and whose power and effect are not diminished even today. Behind its main building-with piercing lancet windows, arching doorways, vaulted ceilings, and thick wooden beams-and the soft russet hues of its sandstone walls, Cornwall Iron Furnace stands fully preserved today as a stunning example of one of Pennsylvania's oldest and proudest industries. It is the only place in the western hemisphere where a curious traveler can see intact structures of an early charcoal-burning iron blast furnace in its original plantation surroundings.

A visit to Cornwall today offers a way to experience what life was like in a well-planned industrial complex, a vital part of the iron industry that formed the economic backbone of Lebanon County and laid the foundation for the development of the United States as an industrial giant. It also provides an introduction to the people who formed the community, from the ironmasters and their families at the upper strata of the social structure, to the skilled workers and laborers and their kin, and the lower reaches who supported this system.

A leading producer of iron for Pennsylvania from 1742 to the end of the nineteenth century, the furnace continued in blast until shut down in 1883. Richard B. Strattan, historic site administrator at Cornwall Iron Furnace, says the well-preserved site is something of "a time machine," making it easy to imagine the furnace operation of the past. "You could see hot gases coming out of the top. With sulfur in ore there were terrible smells. And noises-you could hear the air blasting in the furnace for miles!
Think of the woodcutting. This furnace used an entire acre of wood every day for making charcoal."

The agricultural-based colonial era economy needed iron that could be fashioned into implements, tools, nails, and weapons. Although Great Britain's imperial policy frowned on manufacturing in the colonies, necessity protected early American metallurgy. The near exhaustion of forests in England had forced ironmasters to adopt the more complicated production of coke for fueling furnaces by the late eighteenth century. Most of its pig iron and bar iron had to be imported.