> Let 8 run the numbers a little further.

Let 8 run the numbers a little further. Iron furnaces ;ran 24 hours per day from spring until fall, roughly May 1 to September 1; that’s around 3,000 hours. At around 35 cords of wood per day, this means that about .4,400 cords were required per season for a single furnace. That comes out to about 150 acres of mature forest clear-cut each year (and 25-30 years until the next ‘batch’). Just to cut this amount of wood required a ’ year round effort. By the • mid-1800s, five furnaces were operating in the Massanutten area of the Valley; so these babies alone « were gulping down about 750 kcres of forest per year. Dver the 30-year re-growth jcycle around 23,000 acres got consumed. (Ever seen a clear-cut in the Pacific Northwest? ' Those folks had nothing on us, at least circa 1850). Add to the timber consumption, logging roads, mining pits, and charcoal manufacturing sites and one gets a picture of some pretty serious environmental impact. But that’s progress — a little environmental problem never stopped it before; probably never will (unless the ‘infinite’ resources run out, but that’s another story). Woodcutters received 50 cents per chord for their efforts. Cordwood was sorted in two categories: lap wood (1-4” diameter) and billets (4-7” diameter)

Considering the raw numbers for the wood-cutting, it’s probably not too surprising to learn that once things got ‘fired up’ in the spring at the furnaces, the business of charcoaling went on continuously through the season in a frantic effort to Jceep up. -■*: The collier(s) and assistants had to live on-site .tending the coals during this ^period. They were engaged in a continuous process of jconstructing ‘pits’, large conical mounds of wood that Were burned under near airtight conditions to create charcoal.