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Stone Iron Furnace Museum, Franconia, NH

Photo: AlexiusHoratius, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped and resized.

Museums

Stone Iron Furnace Museum

A surviving granite smelting stack from a 19th-century iron works in Franconia, with a small interpretive center nearby.

Franconia, NH

About Stone Iron Furnace Museum

The octagonal stone stack across the Gale River is the remnant of an early iron smelter that appeared on an 1805 Franconia map. Its operators rebuilt it several times, and it was later worked by a foreman whose name is carved into one of its arch stones. Production ended by 1865 as local ore and charcoal wood ran short and cheaper Pennsylvania iron spread. A volunteer-run interpretive center beside the road holds a scale model, an ore cart, kettles, tools, and panels on the smelting process. The stack itself sits on private land, so visitors view it from the picnic area.

  • #iron-industry
  • #industrial-history
  • #new-hampshire
  • #interpretive-center
  • #volunteer-run

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