Beat blast furnace1/30/2024 The furnace was “blown out” and ceased operations October 8, 1850. By 1846 Illinois Furnace, Illinois had its own post office. At night a great shower of sparks and flames licked the darkened sky, and the burning hardwood in the charcoal pits made an aromatic smell pervade the valley. The pig iron was loaded onto ox carts and transported to Elizabethtown where it was stacked on a levee west of where the Rose Hotel now stands.įor miles around the furnace a roar or beat could be heard. The molten iron flowed out of the bottom of the furnace onto a sand floor where, by a series of trenches in the sand, the iron was led into molds called pigs.Īfter tapping, the hole was again plugged and another twelve-hour cycle began. At this point the furnace was ready to be tapped. After 12 hours the furnace contained about 900 bushels of charcoal, 9 tons of iron ore and 3 tons of limestone. When fully “blown in” and producing iron, the furnace consumed every half hour 37 bushels of charcoal, 750 pounds of iron ore, and 250 pounds of limestone. By April of that year all the preparations were in place. Bridges were built across Hogthief and Big Creeks. The iron ore came from land owned by Jack Moore. Limestone was mined from nearby outcroppings. Wood was cut, corded, and burned in huge piles to make charcoal. Log homes and buildings were constructed and a whole town grew up around the furnace.īy 1840 the construction was complete and the furnace ready to be “blown in.” Raw materials were gathered from the surrounding countryside. Nearby Big Creek was dammed and a millstream dug to the furnace to operate the bellows. The blast furnace resembled a cut-off pyramid, twenty-six feet square at the base, thirty-two feet high, and twenty-two feet square at the top. In 1839, Timothy Guard, a former senator in the Illinois General Assembly, and General Leonard White, a delegate to the Illinois Constitutional Convention in 1816, entered the iron working business by building a blast furnace east of Elizabethtown along the banks of Big Creek. It was therefore feasible and financially advantageous for local people to erect furnaces and ironworks wherever the necessary ore was located. Transportation of the needed iron to the inland settlements was costly and difficult. If some “portable” blacksmith will move his shop into this vicinity, he can get a very large and paying custom.īlacksmiths were in much demand on the frontier. Advertisements such as the following were common wherever newspapers were printed on the frontier: A broken wagon wheel or rifle trigger meant certain death for a pioneer and his family. Travel was treacherous and spare parts were hard to come by. Following the Revolutionary War Americans moved west across the new country into the frontier beyond the eastern mountains.
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