Eliza Furnace

Chocolate, Brown Sugar, Caramel

First operating in 1846, the Eliza Furnace is one of Pennsylvania’s best-preserved iron furnaces. Also known as Ritter’s Furnace, it is one of only a few furnaces left in the United States with its original heat exchange piping intact. Eliza Furnace employed 90 men and boys, and around 45 mules—to produce pig iron—a raw form of iron given its name for the way the liquid metal is hardened. Once the iron ore melted and was liquid in the furnace, the furnace would be ‘tapped, a’ and the motel metal would run down the main channel (the ‘sow’) cut into a floor made of sand, with many side channels (the ‘pigs’) branching off the main. The whole pattern was said to look like rows of piglets nursing from a sow—hence the name. Pig iron produced by Eliza would be hauled by wagon to Ninevah where it could be loaded into boats and sent to Pittsburgh (about 60 miles away) via the Pennsylvania Canal. Once the iron reached the famed Pittsburgh forges, it could be turned into cast or wrought iron. The furnace sits near the midpoint of the Ghost Town Trail—it is a very visible, and accessible reminder of Western Pennsylvania’s long history of iron and steel production. Built along the bed of the former Ebensburg & Black Lick Railroad, the Ghost Town Trail is perfect for biking, and winds through many former company towns, now ghost towns, including Bracken, Lackawanna No. 3, Wehrum, Beulah, and Claghorn.