HAVING A BLAST

Visitors mark 83 years of park, 250 since furnace fired up

At Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site in Union Township, visitors on Saturday could experience pieces of the furnace community’s 250 years of existence.

Displays and demonstrations showcased the site’s important role in Berks County and the country while giving glimpses of everyday life.

Visitors could encounter Civilian Conservation Corps re-enactors try their hands at the game of graces, a popular activity for young girls during the early 1800s that involves tossing and catching rings on sticks.

Supposedly it was designed to make girls more graceful.

It may have been the first time in 80 years that someone has worn a Civilian Conservation Corps uniform on the property, said park manager Jeff Jones.

The park is 83 years old but the furnace was first fired 250 years ago.

Hopewell Furnace was established as a national historic site on Aug. 3, 1938, and preserves the late 18th and early 19th century setting of an ironmaking community, including the charcoal-fuelled furnace, and its natural and cultural resources.

The community illustrates the essential role of industrialization in the growth of the early United States, organizers said.

It had been more than a year since volunteer colliers demonstrated the

charcoal-making process that was so important to the furnace.

Jones said the process slowly burns wood, heating it around the clock for about two weeks to make high-quality charcoal.

The process pulled out the moisture in the wood. The furnace was “in blast” about 50 weeks a year, the park manager said.

Jones said it could burn through an acre of wood a day.

Jones said Hopewell’s history is entwined with nearby French Creek State Park, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary. Many of the trails in the area are former trails that were used to move wood.

In 1934, the Civilian Conservation Corps developed the French Creek Recreational Demonstration Area, which led the National Park Service to examine the historical significance of Hopewell Furnace.

At the direction of the federal government, the CCC began the process of reworking Hopewell into one of the earliest national historic sites administered by the park service.

After the CCC’s disbandment in 1942, the park service continued to restore and reconstruct buildings.

French Creek became a state park in 1946 when the federal government gave about 3,300 acres and buildings from the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps Recreation Demonstration Areas mostly in Union Township to Pennsylvania.

Another 848 acres were retained for Hopewell Furnace.

LISA SCHEID — READING EAGLE Rick Wolf, 80, of Phoenixville portrays a collier at the charcoal pit Saturday at Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site in Union Township. Wolf, a retired national park ranger, supervised at Hopewell in the 1990s. The park’s event Saturday marked the 150th anniversary of the furnace and the 83rd anniversary of the park.

LISA SCHEID — READING EAGLE Joseph Erb of Hanover portrays the commandant of a Civilian Conservation Corps camp. The site’s preservation history is rooted in CCC work during the Great Depression.

LISA SCHEID — READING EAGLE Items from the founding of the park.

LISA SCHEID — READING EAGLE Rick Wolf, 80, of Phoenxville portrays a collier at the charcoal pit at Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site in Union Township. Wolf, a retired National Park Ranger who supervised Hopewell in the 1990s, volunteered at an event Saturday that celebrated the park’s establishment 83years ago. This year also marks the 250anniversary of the furnace’s founding. The volunteer collier program was started in 1991.

LISA SCHEID — READING EAGLE The Establishment Day celebration attracted plenty of visitors.

LISA SCHEID — READING EAGLE Cori Putt, a retired auto mechanic from Robesonia, is a volunteer collier carrying on an old process at Hopewell Furnace National Historical Park in which wood is heated to make coal. The charcoal pit is fired up once a year and takes two weeks. Volunteers tend the pit 24hours a day.