Iron Jungle

[tbutler]

Looks like an ancient pyramid rising out of the jungle in some lost city, doesn't it? :)

This is an abandoned iron smelting furnace in Land Between the Lakes, the Great Western Furnace.





Iron ore, charcoal, and limestone went in the top; a high-pressure stream of air went in the bottom, feeding a fire that went up to 3000 degrees F and melted the ore and limestone into pig iron and slag.



In the end, the furnace operated for less than a year; a slave revolt and lack of ore finished it. The whole thing seems like a really bad idea, but at least it left behind an interesting industrial ruin.

(The 'jungle' part isn't quite so far-fetched, either; for decades the area between the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers was a land of fiercely independent people, with a long history of moonshine stills and 'fightin' against the revenuers'. This mostly ended when the Tennessee Valley Authority built two dams in the 1960's, creating Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley from the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers; much of the land was flooded, and the remainder was cleared out and turned into a national park.)

Comments

[yhlee]

I would have gone with ancient temple instead of furnace! But I don't know anything about iron. :p Neat!

[tbutler]

Heh. Yeah, it looks like an ancient temple, doesn't it? Something Aztec, or out of Machu Picchu.