Swatara Furnace

Built around 1830 by Dr. George N. Eckert and Simon Guilford, Swatara Furnace is an iron plantation on Mill Creek in Pine Grove Township, Schuylkill County. The complex included a limestone furnace, a stone dam breast, an ironmaster's mansion whose stone western section dates to 1830 and whose eastern section was added around 1860, a barn, a foreman's house and a double worker's house. Ore and limestone reached the site by the Union Canal, and the works made stoves and iron chain. A flood around 1860 is the most likely cause of the operation's end, though accounts differ on the dates. The furnace stack and its wheel pit survive well and show the construction of a nineteenth-century iron furnace. The mansion illustrates the gradual enlargement of a house over several decades. Mahlon Boyer acquired the property in 1881, and his descendants still own the mansion, which operates as a bed and breakfast.