Bellefonte Furnace - Founding

Founding

The Bellefonte Furnace Company was formed in April 1887 by a group of investors from Bellefonte, Hollidaysburg, and Philadelphia. Principal investors included John Reilly, railroad contractors Phil and Tom Collins, and their nephew, Tom Shoemaker. The Collins brothers had already constructed the Buffalo Run, Bellefonte and Bald Eagle Railroad from Bellefonte to Struble, opening up the iron ore deposits of the western Nittany Valley. Building a modern furnace to smelt the ore was a logical extension of their interests, since as yet all the furnaces in Centre County were charcoal-fueled cold blast furnaces.

The new furnace company had ore rights at Blair Bank, near Stormstown, Red Bank, near Scotia, and Johnson Bank, near Struble, and shared rights with the McCoy & Linn iron company at Oreland, to the east of Struble. The BRB&BERR built additional branches to reach these ore pits, extending the Red Bank Branch to Blair and Red Bank and the Oreland Branch to Oreland in 1887. Bellefonte Furnace itself was to be located on the former site of the town fairgrounds, a 12-acre (4.9 ha) site on the northwest edge of town, just south of Buffalo Run.

The furnace and associated buildings were built from brick and limestone quarried along the Oreland Branch. They were designed by Taws & Hartman, a Philadelphia engineering partnership that specialized in the construction of blast furnaces. The furnace complex included a stock house for storing raw materials, the furnace itself, 70 feet (21 m) tall, three stoves and an engine house for heating and pressurizing the hot blast, and a cast house where the molten iron could be formed into castings. The smokestack for the stoves, 153 feet (47 m) high, was the most prominent part of the complex. The BRB&BERR, which ran along the north side of Buffalo Run here and had its shops immediately to the north of the furnace, laid a spur into the furnace complex, with several tracks for delivering supplies and receiving products.

Ore was supplied by the furnace's own ore holdings and by other local miners and was shipped in over the BRB&BERR. Limestone for ironmaking was quarried at a 30-acre (12 ha) site nearby, just north of the BRB&BE shops. Coke was obtained from the Connellsville region. With ample space on the site, slag was dumped in a heap between the furnace and Buffalo Run. When running at full capacity, the furnace could consume 100 short tons (91,000 kg) of limestone, 150 short tons (140,000 kg) of coke, and 225 short tons (204,000 kg) of ore per day and produce 100 short tons (91,000 kg) of iron.

The furnace was first put into blast on January 31, 1888, in a ceremony attended by Bellefonte native and ex-governor Andrew Curtin. Two months later, Valentine Furnace, another hot blast iron furnace, had also gone into blast on the south side of Bellefonte. While Valentine Furnace was operated separately from Bellefonte Furnace, Shoemaker and the Collins brothers had engineered and built the Nittany Valley Railroad, which supplied ore to Valentine Furnace.

With Bellefonte and Valentine Furnaces both in blast, the Beech Creek Railroad began to consider an extension to tap the furnace traffic from Bellefonte. However, all was not well with the iron firms. A statewide construction boom had led to a surplus of ironmaking capacity, depressing prices. Both furnaces were also suffering from a shortage of ore. The Nittany Valley hematite banks could not supply enough ore to run Bellefonte Furnace at more than 80% of capacity, a reduction in its economy of scale that made it unprofitable to run with the depression in iron prices. High freight rates discouraged buying ore from more distant local mines. On January 31, 1891, Bellefonte Furnace went out of blast for maintenance. A strike during the spring pushed up the price of coke, and the furnace remained idle. With Bellefonte Furnace cold, the BRB&BERR lost two-thirds of its trade, and was thrown into bankruptcy in July.