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of energy consumption were a significant part of the mix as well.'
Governor Alexander Spotswood is thought to have introduced iron making to Virginia in the 1700s. The industry did not “take off, however until about 1800. Around that time, folks who had learned the iron business as indentured servants under Spotswood made thenway to the Shenandoah Valley along with other skilled workers migrating south from Pennsylvania. In the great valley of Virginia, they found all the essential ingredients necessary for iron production: iron ore, limestone, water (for mechanical power), and (lots of) energy.
Thought not present in huge amounts, Massanutten and North Mountains were found to hold a reasonable quantity of Oriskany brown iron ores. Much of the ore was strip (surface) mined and remnants of the scars still exist today. As the many caverns of the Shenandoah Valley remind us, limestone is abundant in this region as are streams with sufficient flow to power mills and associated machineiy. And then there was the energy; our ancestors knew a resource when they walked through it so naturally they turned to the “forest tali’. Not directly, however. Burning wood by itself is not hot enough to melt iron ore for processing. But turn all that ‘cellulose’ into charcoal, and man, now we’re talking mini blast furnace. All well and good; the only trouble was that the quantity of wood required to ‘char’ the necessary coals was astonishing - around 150 acres of forest had to be clear-cut every year to supply the wood for the coaling process. So forget trying to stock up with
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