Hopewell Furnace offers step back into 19th century
The Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site spreads over 868 acres in Union Township as well as Warwick Township, Chester County, and allows visitors to step back in time to a 19th-century industrial complex.
“It’s basically the Silicon Valley of the American iron industry in the 19th century,” said Jeff Jones, site manager of the furnace since April 2021.
“Hopewell Furnace is important because it maybe preserves one of the best physical examples of what an iron furnace operation would have physically looked like,” he said. “The number of structures we have still standing that have been restored to their roughly 1830s-1840s time period really relays the physical layout of what all went into a furnace.”
Jones, who has been with the National Park Service 18½ years, said visitors can take the knowledge acquired at Hopewell to any other furnace site ruins or remnants in southeastern Pennsylvania and be able to envision what once stood there.
The furnace was fully operational between 1772 and 1883.
In 1769 Mark Bird purchased 97- and 234-acre tracts along the county line the Hugh family according to Berks County Recorder of Deeds files. It was there that Bird would build Hopewell Furnace to make pig iron to help supply his family’s vast other industrial holdings.
Marcus “Mark” Bird was born in January 1738, the son of William Bird, for which Birdsboro is named, and Bridgetta Huling (spelled Bridget Hulling.) The elder Bird had established New Pine Forge at Hay Creek and the precursor to Birdsboro Steel as well as several mills.
Marcus Bird would become the largest producer of iron in America during the Revolutionary War, in which he served as a colonel.
“Hopewell, as best as our records indicate, actually contributed and cast iron cannon for the American Revolution,” Jones said. “It actually pre-dated the nation but also helped to establish the nation.”
One place Jones said visitors could overlook if they don’t venture into all the buildings at the park is the powerhouse of the furnace: the water wheel.
“We do have a full-size, functioning water wheel that is powered by still water from French Creek just as it would have been done in the 1800s,” Jones said. “That’s rolling along. Just the sheer scale of that scene: the pistons on the side, the bellows pumping, you get a sense of the sheer scale that went into the iron operations there. That’s kind of a neat thing you can just hypnotize yourself watching it roll along, a little mist that it creates gives a little relief on a hot summer day.
“It gives that really physical, moving example of how an industry looked like in the early 19th century.”
Not only does the site have examples of the physical attributes of what it took to run the furnace industry, but they have firsthand statistics.
“We have the 19th century’s worth of business records or the ledgers of Hopewell Furnace,” Jones said. “It really gives a very clear understanding of ‘here’s the number of individuals who were needed’ for every individual task at the furnace, ‘here’s the amount of supplies, here’s the products they produced,’ the duration of a blast, or when the furnace is lit and smelting iron. So it gives both a physicaland records-wise understanding of just how all furnaces would have operated here in southeast Pennsylvania.”
When asked what his favorite aspect of Hopewell was, Jones noted the water wheel and simply the site’s age.
“The furnace last year turned 250 years old,” said. “So that physical furnace stack you are looking at, you can look at it and realize that it predates the United States of America. So that’s a really neat facet to think about.”
The park is surrounded by French Creek State Park on three sides, so visitors can take advantage of those amenities as well during a day trip.
Four trails run through the Hopewell site, and some connect to others in French Creek park.
Leashed pets are welcome on the grounds, but only service dogs may accompany the person they are assisting inside buildings.
Upcoming events include Establishment Day programming on Saturday, Aug. 6. Jones explained that each year on the Saturday closest to Aug. 3, the site commemorates when the site officially became affiliated with the National Park Service as an official historic site: Aug. 3, 1938.
“We do some of our biannual charcoal burns, the furnace will be starting up that day,” Jones said. “Another event that is coming up a few weeks after that on Aug. 20, we are partnering with the ChesMont Astronomical Society for a Star Fest event that will be happening after hours that Saturday. There will be about 10 different-sized/strength telescopes set up in the field right by our apple orchard. We’ll have various programming throughout the evening and once it gets fully dark, we’ll start gazing at the stars.”