Look ahead for the impressive stone ruins with tall arches and a shelter on top-those mighty gray walls are the Scranton Iron Furnaces.
Imagine the clang of hammers and the roar of blazing fires-right where you’re standing, Scranton’s iron heart beat the loudest in America! These stone giants were built between 1848 and 1857, and in their heyday, men hurried about in a haze of smoke, making the iron rails that would stretch across the country-rails for the Erie Railroad laid here before you in 1847. The iron flowed so fast that, by 1865, this spot had the largest production in the U.S. and later fired up steel, too! By 1880, the furnaces spit out 125,000 tons of pig iron a year-enough to make a train conductor dream of piggy banks. The furnaces finally retired in 1902 when production chugged off to New York, but today the site stands as a monument under the care of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Fun fact-Al Gore even rallied a crowd here in 2000. Every arch whispers stories of sweat, ambition, and the sparks that built a nation-who knew piles of old stone could be so dramatic?
