Eliza Furnace
In the beginning…
David Ritter and George Rodgers purchased several thousand acres of land in the Blacklick Valley. In their purchase was an area ideal for a blast furnace. A section of the land sits near the forks of the North and South branches of Blacklick Creek.
Construction began on the furnace in 1845. They hired Thomas Deveraux, a stone mason from Cambria Township, and two Irish immigrants, John and William Gillin, from Vinco to work on the stonework. Before the construction could be completed, George Rodgers sold his share of the furnace to Lot Irvin.
The furnace began operation in 1846. The Eliza Furnace, also known as Ritter’s Furnace was the first of three hot-blast iron furnaces in the region. It is pyramid shaped and constructed from unmortered sandstone. It stands about thirty two feet high. The hollow interior or bosh measures nine feet in diameter. At the very top, and still visible today are the hot blast heat exchanger coils. The furnace was driven by a water wheel that powered leather bellows.
How did it work?
This furnace utilized the hot blast method. This method worked by firing the furnace and stoking. After being stoked for several days, the furnace would be ready to be charged. The charging process required iron ore, charcoal and limestone to be hauled across a wooden charging bridge and loaded by furnace workers called “fillers”.
All of the raw materials were layered on top of each other until the furnace was filled. Once filled, the charcoal was ignited. This is where the bellows came in. The bellows pushed hot air up to the heat exchanger coils. When the air was in the coils, it was heated by the exhaust gases of the burning charcoal. The hot air was then recirculated back down to the bottom of the furnace and into the hearth.
This process was supposed to increase the temperature and the smelting process. However, it only raised the temperature by ten to fifteen degrees. Once the smelting porcess began, the molten ore gathered at the bottom of the furnace hearth and then flowed into a dam.
Once the smelting process was complete the slag was removed from the ore and discarded. The dam was then removed and the iron was placed into molds on the sand floor of the casting house.
When the iron cooled, it could be shipped for sale. The pig iron was hauled by wagon to Ninevah (modern day Seward). The iron was then transported on the Pennsylvania Canal all the way to Pittsburgh.
During the Hey-day
The furnace operation consisted of 231 acres. Besides the furnace stack, there would have been a bridge house, wheel and bellows houses, casting house, a stove house, stable, 21 log homes, sawmill, an office, a smith house, a couple wagon shops, a boarding house, a smoke house and a company store. The Eliza furnace was an average sized Pennsylvania operation. They employed ninety men and boys and utilized about forty five horses and mules.
The Eliza Furnace produced 1,080 tons of iron at its busiest. Sadly, the life of the furnace was not to be long lived. It requires a large amount of raw materials to produce just one ton of iron. Two to three tons of ore, one to one and a half tons of charcoal and twenty-five to one hundred pounds of limestone, in fact.
They had to make and store their own charcoal. The average furnace used the equivalent of one acre of forest per day.
The Fires Went Out
Even though the Eliza Furnace was impressive in its operation, it ran at a financial loss from the beginning. They were never able to turn a profit. Most often the employees were paid in kind rather than in cash.
There were several reasons for failure. The cost to ship the pig iron overland to Ninevah was expensive. The poor quality of the local iron ore was not helpful, especially since better quality iron ore was discovered in the Mesabi Range in Minnesota.
Another contributing factor to failure was the failure of the Pennsylvania Railroad to go through Blacklick Valley. Lower tariffs on imported iron and outdated technology were also large contributing factors to failure.
By June of 1848, David Ritter was in dire financial straits. The furnace stopped operating around 1849. He was sued by his previous partner George Rodgers for the sum of $350. Unable to pay his debts, the sheriff seized the property. It was then sold in a sheriffs sale to Soloman Alter and Joseph Replier.
The property began to change hands until it it fell to the Cambria County Historical Society in 1965. It is now leased by the Indiana County Parks. Buildings fell to disrepair and were torn down. All that is left now is the furnace with its heat exchanger pipes and a wagon path to the top of the hill. When exploring along the path, you can find the remains of a building. Though i’m not sure which building it would have been.
The Eliza Furnace is Haunted?
As the furnace stack sat and decayed rumors of ghostly sightings began to spread. It is said that David Ritter was distraught over his financial doom. So distraught, in fact, that he climbed to the top of the furnace, tied a rope to the pipes and jumped.
It is also said that Ritter was so distraught when his young son fell into the furnace and burned to death that he felt he must die at the same place, hanging himself from the top of the furnace.
However, some also said that his ex-partner ran away with Ritter’s wife and, again, he is so distraught he takes himself to the top of the furnace and hangs himself. To this day his ghost is seen haunting the furnace. Or is it?
So, what is the real story? Well, sorry to burst anyone’s bubble, but there is no evidence that anyone hanged themselves at the Eliza Furnace. Or that Ritter’s son died there. In the book Vintondale by Denise Dusza Weber, she states that David Ritter died in Catawissa, Columbia County in 1858.
His partner Lot Irvin did commit suicide. He even hung himself from a furnace, just not the Eliza Furnace. He died in Greenville, PA.
It is unclear why people believe there was a suicide there, but it does make for a good story. If you are interested another story about local history, check out my post on the Staple Bend Tunnel.