Aid, OH: 1857-59 Oak Ridge Furnace and The Hanging Rock Iron Region

Oak Ridge: (Satellite? This is Country Route 5 near Aid, OH; but I could not find the furnace)

Hanging Rock: (Satellite, someplace on that cliff.)

A map of the iron furnaces, Oak Ridge is near the eastern boundry of the region.

1 of 4 photos posted by Abandoned

Oak Ridge Furnace was constructed in 1856-57 in the Hanging Rock Iron Region of Ohio. It featured a stack 44 feet in height with a bosh 11 feet wide. Originally fueled by charcoal, its hot air blast was converted to run on coal in 1858, allowing for a daily production capacity of 15 tons. Oak Ridge failed to generate a profit and eventually closed in 1859.

The production of pig iron, munitions, and tools in the Between Rivers, Green River, Hanging Rock, Red River, and Rolling Fork Iron Regions in Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia, as well as other regions of the United States, was facilitated by the availability of charcoal timber, iron ore, and limestone as raw materials for the furnaces. Many of the furnaces were not operated at scale, were mismanaged, or had high transportation and labor costs. Iron fields in other areas had lower sulfur content and higher yields, and by the 1900s, most of the Hanging Rock Iron Region furnaces were idled or blown out. It was predicted that iron ore in the Hanging Rock Iron Region would last for 2,700 years, but the last of the primitive blast furnaces closed in 1916.

➤ Check out more photos of Oak Ridge Furnace at 

https://abandonedonline.net/location/pig-iron-furnaces/#oak-ridge-furnace

Garth Sturgill: There are several Furnaces in the area. Blackfork, Olive, Buckhorn, Lawrence, Cannons Creek.
Richard Whitlock: If you would ever like to visit a restored 19 th century iron smelting community, please visit Fayette State Park on Lake Michigan in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The blast furnaces and many of the town’s buildings have been restored. Very interesting place and beautiful setting among limestone bluffs in a small natural harbor on Big Bay deNoc.
Charles Wesley Reynolds: there's one by garden of the gods in southern Illinois
Abandoned shared

Street View, Oct 2022

Inscription. 

The Hanging Rock Iron Region

To furnish the needs of the early settlers, then to furnish ordnance for a nation at war, and finally to furnish merchant iron to the steel mills, 100 iron producing blast furnaces were built within these 1,800 square miles of the lower coal measures to become known as the Hanging Rock Region.

Lawrence County, centrally located within the Region, had 23 blast furnaces constructed between 1826 and 1909.

The Blast Furnaces of Lawrence County

1. Union • 2. Pine Grove • 3. Aetna • 4. Vesuvius • 5. Buckhorn • 6. Mt. Vernon • 7. Hecla • 8. Lawrence • 9. La Grange • 10. Centre • 11. Olive • 12. Washington • 13. Oak Ridge • 14. Pioneer • 15. Monitor • 16. Belfont • 17. Grant • 18. Etna-Alice • 19. Etna-Blanche • 20. Maggie • 21. Sarah • 22. Hamilton • 23. Ironton

 

Erected 1973 by The Lawrence County Historical Society and The Ohio Historical Society. (Marker Number 1-44.)

[hmdb]

CincinnatiLibrary, sidebar 4, Public Domain
A standard history of the Hanging Rock Iron Region of Ohio, 1916
Archive has a copy that is easier to read

"This place initiated the Iron Furnace Industry in Appalachia and the Mid-West in 1824." [HangingRockOhio]

"From about 1830 to 1900, the Hanging Rock Iron Region produced the majority of iron within the United States. The iron region is about eight miles wide. It extends through the east part of Scioto (county), and the west part of Lawrence(county), and enters Jackson county on the north, and Greenup county, KY, on the south. Most of the iron in Lawrence is made into pig metal, the molten iron flows into channels called pigs for cooling, hence the name pig iron: it is also excellent for bar iron. (Furnaces had not yet been built in Vinton and Hocking Counties on the north)." [HockingHills]

"Much of the armament for both sides during the Civil War came from iron smelted in the Hanging Rock region, including materials used in building both the USS Monitor and the CSS Merrimack." Vesuvius Furnace, constructed in 1833, pioneered "a technique to reduce the heat required and increase production of “hot blast” furnace systems....Each ton of iron required 190 bushes of charcoal, three tons of iron ore and 300 pounds of limestone." [usda]

I think Hanging Rock was at the top of this cliff, which is at the bend in the Ohio river.

Street View, Aug 2022

The topo lines clearly shows the steepness of the river side of the hill.

USGS

Hanging Rock -is located in Hamilton Township – Hanging Rock was the name given it from the overhanging cliff above the town, where the bold front of a huge rock juts from the hill, threatening the village below, literally with a “hanging rock.”  [Hardesty Atlas]

Another story:  The Indians called it “Heap Big Rock.”  When the white man arrived in 1794, they chased the Indians back and told them they’d hang the first red skin that peeped over the rock, and since then, it has been Hanging Rock.  Hanging Rock has also been known as the “Bend in the River.”

Another story: A rock in the river hung up the boats, thus calling it “Hanging Rock.”

The first forge was at Hanging Rock, built by Andrew Ellison, James Rodgers, and Robert Hamilton in 1830 and changed to the first rolling mill by Robert Hannah in 1840.  Peebles, Wood & Co. built the first foundry at Hanging Rock in 1844.  The Hanging Rock Railroad commenced in 1846 and finished in 1847, and the next year the locomotive Shawnee was placed on the track.

The 1880 census shows the population of Hanging Rock as 624.

[1800s via HangingRock] (More furnaces: Hanging Rock Furnaces)