Riding in a pickup truck with Robert “Skip” Johnson along a ridge in Estill County we get a history lesson on life in the 1800’s. “We are on the Cottage Furnace Road. And this would be the road that they would bring the pig iron out on. It was a wagon road, and you can see parts of the old road up through here.”
We’re going into the Daniel Boone National Forest where the road turns from asphalt to gravel. A sign reads National Forest Historic Site Cottage Furnace and an arrow points down a dirt road.
This “cottage” will be unlike any cottage I have ever seen. After walking along a trail for about a mile we come upon a dry laid stone structure that looks more like a giant fireplace. In the middle of the front-facing wall is a V-shaped opening that goes just a few feet inside. Small trees are growing in the stone walls which turn out to be blocks of limestone.
It’s a quiet place in the woods, but in 1854 the Fitchburg Cottage was a beehive of activity. Back then Kentucky was the nation’s third largest producer of iron, and at least one hundred furnaces were burning hot throughout the state. Most of them were relatively small like the Cottage Furnace, about twenty-five square feet.
Johnson recalls, “It went into operation; I think in early ’56. It takes about two years to carve these stones out of the hillside. But the whole time this furnace is being built, you have people out in the woods, colliers making charcoal, and you have people out digging iron ore, mining iron ore, and bringing limestone in. So, this, it's like an anthill. This is just a big human anthill. I mean, it was, they were coming and going.”
Johnson grew up in Estill County and lives just a few miles from the Cottage Furnace and is a former social studies teacher. He has a deep passion for the area’s history and in particular, the furnaces that were at one time the focus of the local economy.
Why did Estill County emerge as a home for the furnaces? Johnson answers, “We had three things. We had iron ore. We had wood to make charcoal, and we had sandstone to make the furnaces out of. You had to have those three things, and you wouldn't find them in other parts of Kentucky. No, not together, not concentrated.”
Little is left of most of the Kentucky furnaces - so preserving the Cottage Furnace is important in Johnson’s view. We leave to go see an even larger furnace that Johnson and a few other people have spent years preserving.
The Fitchburg Furnace on the Furnace Fork of Miller’s Creek is much larger and grander than the Cottage Furnace. It looks more like a giant monument or castle as Johnson remembers calling it back when he was a young boy. The sandstone block structure is 81 feet long, 40 feet wide, and 60 feet high.
Unlike the Cottage Furnace, a visitor can go inside this furnace, and marvel at what the stone masons built in 1868. There is no sign of it now, but in the 1870’s the bustling town of Fitchburg grew up around the furnace.
Johnson compares the sudden economic boom from iron production in Estill County to the Gold Rush out West. “This was a boom town. If you go back and read the ledger, the census, there are people here from all over the world. There’re engineers, chemists, bankers.”
A man named Frank Fitch designed the Fitchburg Furnace. It took two years to build what’s believed to be the world’s largest charcoal furnace. It employed about a thousand men. It was a bold and risky project. In 1870 when the Fitchburg Furnace started operation, the railroad had not yet reached the hills of Estill County.
The nearest railroad was 55 miles away in Lexington. That meant any iron produced at the furnace had to be loaded on wagons pulled by oxen, and transported to barges on the Kentucky River.
The Fitchburg Furnace only operated for a few years. It and many other businesses across the country were shut down during the financial panic of 1873. The iron industry also left Kentucky as rich iron ore beds were discovered in Alabama.
For decades the now silent Fitchburg Furnace sat largely forgotten. In 2006, Johnson and five other people formed the “Friends of the Fitchburg Furnace.” Their goal was to find enough funding to preserve the large furnace and make it safe enough for visitors.
Johnson credits the late Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning for getting a federal grant of $750,000. The funds were used to shore up the furnace, build a roof, clean up the exterior, make the interior safe, and add information stations that detail the furnace's history.
When Johnson was a teacher, he’d bring his students on field trips to the Fitchburg Furnace. “I took my classes up there, and it's a history lesson, it's a chemistry lesson, it's a reading lesson, it's math, it's everything. I mean, this is chemistry at its finest. You know, what takes place inside that hearth is you're taking a solid, you're turning it into a liquid, you're extracting the impurities, and you're turning it back into a solid in the 1800s.”
The furnace is open to the public. Shonna Canter who grew up in Estill County is proud of the furnace’s history and preservation.
“Very proud, and it's just that this is the largest furnace in the world. Who has that? We do, and I wish more people would come and see it. They can pull right up to it. They don't even have to get out of their vehicle to see the beauty and just the workmanship.”
There’s also a book, “Fitchburg Furnace: the Story in Pictures and Text” that details the history and preservation efforts.
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