West Fork Furnace

Deep in a forested valley southeast of the Town of Floyd, a massive stone furnace stack marks the site of an iron works built around 1853. The 2.6-acre property keeps the furnace, a dry-laid retaining wall, a ridge-top staging area where charcoal, ore and limestone were stored, a head race, a wheel pit and a tail race. Water from the East Prong of Furnace Creek powered a waterwheel that drove the bellows. Robert Toncray raised the venture, but costs of hauling limestone, poor markets for the copper-bearing iron and financial troubles ended production by late 1855. The furnace never fired again and stayed largely unchanged for about 140 years. That short life left an unusually intact mid-19th-century industrial site. It was listed for its engineering value as a distinctive ore-processing system and for the archaeological deposits in the staging area that may reveal how such furnaces were designed and operated. A Shelor family organization bought the property in 1990.