Searching for the Past in Dunbar

1886

Last week, Frank Festa and I took a ride into Fayette County to visit the Dunbar area. Located a bit south of Connellsville, it is a little over an hour away from my house. I’ve been here numerous times and whether hiking, exploring, rock climbing or off-roading in the Jeep, I have ALWAYS enjoyed myself.

    To make the most of the day, we left before the sun rose. While we were loading my car we stopped for a minute to watch the Chinese Space Station pass overhead, talk about good timing! 

    About an hour later we stopped at West Overton Village to take some pictures of the buildings. (and to find a geocache) The village’s principal business was whiskey production. This is where Henry Clay Frick was born in 1849. His father, John W. Frick worked for Mr. Overholt in his grist mill and eventually married Overholt’s daughter Elizabeth. Henry came along a short time later and after growing up, he worked here and at the Overholt Distillery in Broad Ford before moving into the coal and coke industries.

    Soon afterwards we were driving down into the small community of Dunbar. Our first stop was a field where the ruins of several lines of coke ovens sat. Since this is located on private property, we made sure to obtain permission before venturing past the No Trespassing signs.

    If we hadn’t known that the coke ovens were here, we would’ve never guessed it. There were high weeds and plenty of thorned bushes with lots of deer trails running through them. Numerous fallen trees hampered our way into and around the site.

    We soon saw the darkened openings of the ovens. The fronts of all most all of the ovens had been destroyed. This was done to avoid taxation. Up close, we could see the beautiful work that was done making these ovens.

    They are called “Beehive” ovens because of their shape.  They were used to make coke out of coal. Fireproof bricks were laid in a circle and built up like an igloo. A round hole was at the top center.

     The broken edges show how the brick was laid; the heat inside the oven is evident by the scouring and glazing on many of the bricks.

    There are three rows of ovens here with ovens on either side. There are approximately 35 ovens per side, about 70 per row. A few ovens sit closer to the road possibly part of another row that was destroyed when the road was put in, there may have been more here at one time. This is just a small number of ovens in the area, the Dunbar area had over 20,000 coke ovens in 1900!

    The ovens were loaded from the top and once the process had been completed, bricks set in an opening in the front were removed and the finished coke was pulled out to be taken by horse, mule or train to iron furnaces and later, steel mills.

    After “roaming” around the field for an hour or so, we returned to town and parked in front of the Dunbar Historical Society. This organization is a wonderful place to get information about the coal, coke and iron industries that used to be located in this area. The volunteers here have always been more than helpful whenever I’ve stopped in to ask for some help on research. A reproduction of a coke oven sits in the park across from the society.

    We hiked about a mile on the Sheepskin Trail to a spot where 78 more coke ovens had worked. These were called the Uniondale Ovens. Three ovens still have their fronts attached. Iron bars have been placed across the openings to protect them from vandals, making them look like a jail. A sign explains how the ovens worked along with a picture of ovens in use.

    Back at the car, we drove about 5-6 miles into the State Game lands to search for the Old Laurel Iron Furnace. Using Sharp and Thomas’s book, A Guide to the Old Stone Blast Furnaces in Western Pennsylvania, we had a pretty good idea of where it had been located. The book was written in 1966 and a lot of things have changed in the past 58 years. The stream the authors mention as sitting beside the furnace is listed as Laurel Run, on my topo maps it is called Morgan Run.

    We parked in a convenient spot and walked down stream, looking for anything that might have been an iron furnace. We found a large pile of stones and dirt against a hillside near a nice flat area. On closer inspection we found some cut stones and a small section of wall made out of stacked stones. A pit or depression sat beside the mound with a couple sets of stacked stone, perhaps a waterwheel pit.

    Snow hid a lot from us but we did find some slag and that indicted that a furnace had sat near here at some time in the past. In the S&T book they said that the outer stones of this furnace were removed, possibly to help in the manufacture of the New Laurel Furnace, a mile or two further downstream. Looking at what we had found, we were pretty sure that this mound was all of what is left of the Old Laurel Furnace. The Old Laurel Furnace had been built in 1797, two hundred and twenty-seven years ago!

    Back at the car, we continued further into the game-lands. The road degraded into a dirt and gravel road covered with snow and ice.  We drove with-in a ¼ mile of the New Laurel Furnace and then opted to walk the rest of the way due to the steep hill in front of us. The last thing we wanted to do was to get stuck at the bottom of a hill miles from the nearest paved road.

    The New Laurel Furnace sits between the juncture of two roads, one continuing on downhill to the Youghiogheny River and the other crossing Morgan Run and leading up into the hills.

    This furnace was built in 1812. Considering how long it has been standing, it is in fairly good shape. The front face has collapsed and the walls of the remaining sides all show signs of shifting and movement. There are trees growing on it and their roots are pushing the stones further apart. The backside has a large crack from the ground to the top, resembling a large zipper.

    On the east side the remaining arch can be seen. There is also a stone structure sitting close to the furnace on this side which may have been a support for a water wheel. This set of stones has a tree growing on it also, slowly destroying the nicely set stones.

    At the top of the backside, a notch where the loading bridge was attached can be seen. Looking from the front, the curvature of the inner chimney can be seen near the top.

Slag can be easily found in the ground surrounding the furnace.

    Even though it is falling down, it is a grand looking structure. After all these years, the remaining corners are still straight and sharp. It is hidden in the woods where only hunters, explorers and historians would see it. I always enjoy visiting the site. It is quiet here, in the summer it is hidden by weeds, trees and jagger bushes and in the winter it is on display with a snowy covering.

    It is quite different here than when it was in operation. Numerous buildings would have been near-by. Smoke and noise would have filled the air. Workers would have been busy with the operations of the furnace and all the additional jobs required keeping it in blast. The furnaces worked non-stop, 24 hours a day for as long as possible. This furnace went out of blast, or shut down, in 1838, allowing peace and quiet to return to the area.

    Frank and I hiked back up the hill to the car and after a quick stop at the Dunbar Historical Society to say hello, we headed back home. We had found everything we wanted to, the weather co-operated and other than a few punctures by thorns, there were no injuries!

    Back at Frank's car we watched a plane fly underneath the moon as we unloaded the car, a good way to end the trip. Returning home, I was tired but happy!

Hidden Deep in the Woods

                Two hundred and five years ago, this area was a thriving center of activity. People were chipping on stones, cutting them into shape to lay them into walls and to make a furnace, built into the sides of the steep hills. Dirt roads would have been cleared to allow wagons filled with supplies and men to easily access the area.  Buildings would have been built to protect the equipment to house the support facilities such as food and an office for the owner and the bosses to work from.

                Now, the area is quiet, the only sounds noticeable are of the stream running through the valley and the birds, that and the occasional tree falling down. Frank and I were hiking into the site of the old Center Iron Furnace. Built in 1815, there are still a few walls and remnants of what used to be there. It would be our second trip into it, my third. (This furnace is sometimes incorrectly called the Dunbar Furnace which actually sat closer to the town of Dunbar)

                After the furnace was built, workers would be working on chopping down trees and digging for coal and iron ore to put into the new furnace.  Running an iron furnace was a multi-man job, not to mention a 24 hour a day, seven day a week operation. There were a lot of jobs that needed done. The valley would have been filled with smoke and the sounds of industry.

                Iron furnaces were only operational for a short while. Some only lasted a couple years, especially the older ones. Some of the later furnaces lasted for decades.  The life of an iron furnace would be determined by the availability of the ingredients necessary for making the iron. Coal, limestone, trees and of course, iron ore would be needed. A lot of furnaces in Pennsylvania were shut down because all the trees in the area had been cut down to make charcoal.

                It eventually became cheaper to build another furnace rather than shipping the supplies in. When building another furnace they could incorporate newer technologies. They could also build it in a more advantageous spot, closer to roads and other forms of transportation and also closer to other faculties that would use the ingots they made.

                Once the furnace was shut down the owners would remove any useful equipment and then the furnace was left to nature. Quiet returned. Any wooden buildings would eventually rot away; no foundations would have been built since the furnace's lifetime was so short.  Any sign of these buildings disappeared over the years. Stones from the furnaces were scavenged for foundations and walls.

                At this site, the waters of the stream knocked down most of the furnace. The stones here fell into the stream and were pushed away as time marched on. Newer furnaces were built out of stone that had been cut to size and were built further away from the destructive forces of flowing water.  Water was an important part of furnaces; it powered bellows which helped increase the heat of the furnaces. Most of the earlier furnaces are now nothing but piles of rubble, Mother Nature having worked her magic on them. Rain, snow and the roots of trees are marvelous tools for destroying stonework!

                This site, at the juncture of the Glade Run and the Dunbar Creek is where the remains of the Center Furnace lies. Built in 1815, it is one of the earliest in this area. The furnace was built into the hillside. Stacked rocks can be seen but most of it has been washed away by the stream. Beside the remains of the furnace is a nicely built stone wall. There is an opening behind it, between it and the hillside. I am guessing it might have been a waterway. There are nice square corners on it, still sharp after all these years.

                On the hillside above the furnace, about 30 yards up the steep hillside are the remains of the charcoal house. Built out of fieldstone and into the hillside, it is amazing to see how much of it is still standing. This structure is very similar to the charcoal house standing near the Alliance Furnace on Jacobs Creek.      https://bookman56.blogspot.com/2020/08/walkin-into-past.html

                The front wall is approximately 50-60 feet long with an opening at the end nearest the furnace. Two walls at either end, each about 20 feet long work into the hillside. The fourth wall is the hillside itself.

                Trees are growing inside the structure. The walls are various heights with the far corner the highest, approximately 15 feet high. Stones are missing in many places and some are hanging off the top, waiting for nature and gravity to do its work.

                I can’t help but be impressed that these structures are still standing after over 200 years! Was it good construction techniques or was it the absence of visitors who might harm or destroy the site?

                We will be back! There was what looked like a cave near-by that Frank found and on an earlier visit, I saw a stone lined trough in the valley across from the furnace. My curiosity is calling me back! We were both tired when we got back to the truck but this soon passed. Not bad for two old guys! We were both satisfied with our hike and what we saw and we both have the idea of a future visit festering in our minds.

                Till then, the ruins remain hidden deep in the woods.