Katahdin Iron Works

Katahdin Iron Works is a Maine state historic site located in the unorganized township of the same name. The state's property contains Gulf Hagas, a canyon on the West Branch of the Pleasant River that is a National Natural Landmark. About a mile and a half downriver is another national landmark, "The Hermitage", a roughly-35-acre grove of large Eastern White Pine trees that is preserved by The Nature Conservancy. In 2003, the Appalachian Mountain Club acquired a 37,000-acre property upriver from Gulf Hagas that it named Katahdin Iron Works.

Iron Works

In 1843, a limonite gossan, a form of iron ore, was discovered on nearby Ore Mountain. The gossan was the primary source of mined ore. It overlaid a pyrrhotite deposit of iron sulfide ore. Assuming the depth matches the known surface area, this deposit would be among the world's largest sulfide deposits. However, the rural location and poor quality of the ore continues to make it uneconomic to mine.

Operating for 25 years intermittently between 1843 and 1890, a blast furnace iron mill located where the West Branch of the Pleasant River flows out of Silver Lake was the most significant iron works in the state. The mill converted 10,000 cords of wood to charcoal in sixteen beehives, which was used to fire the furnace and produce about 2,000 tons of pig iron annually. It failed economically when steel mills that delivered the pig iron directly to the steel furnaces were developed because it was a small scale operation in a location remote from both workers and customers. The state has restored the blast furnace and one of the beehive charcoal kilns; these and some of the foundations for other buildings are all that remain of the mill and village.

Records from the mill can be found at the University of Maine's Fogler Library.

Gulf Hagas

Gulf Hagas is a two and a half mile long water formed canyon. The river falls 500 feet in the canyon, including multiple waterfalls. It is sometomes called the "Grand Canyon of the East". It is an eight mile (round trip) side trip off the 100-Mile Wilderness section of the Appalachian Trail.

External links

* [http://www.state.me.us/cgi-bin/doc/parks/find_one_name.pl?park_id=36 Site webpage] from Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands
* [http://www.maine.gov/doc/parks/programs/history/kiw/history.htm History] from Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands
* [http://www.explorenewengland.com/travel?article=/maine/articles/2006/10/01/trail_mix/ Article about hiking Gulf Hagas] that originally ran in the Boston Globe
* [http://www.trcmaine.org/maps/katahdin.php Map of the township] that shows the site of the ironworks

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