J. Wesley Gephart - Resurgence and Death

Resurgence and Death

Gephart was not daunted by these reverses. Operating surreptitiously, he assembled a consortium of New York and Philadelphia investors, who formed the Bellefonte Furnace Company in May 1899 to take over the operations of Bellefonte Furnace, idle since the Panic of 1893. Gephart was named president of the new company, whose assets included not only the furnace and its historic ore sources at Mattern Bank and Red Bank, but the Scotia ore deposits, acquired from the Carnegie Steel Company after it switched to Mesabi Range ore. Gephart also obtained a charter for the Bellefonte Lime CompanyD in September 1899, which bought the Morris lime quarry at Salona, Pennsylvania, on the Central Railroad of Pennsylvania. In addition to Gephart, the organizers included L. T. Munson, John P. Harris, and Charles M. Clement, president of the Central Railroad. The new company was to supply limestone to Bellefonte Furnace, and to the Beech Creek Railroad for ballast.

However, Bellefonte Furnace was not on the line of the Central Railroad of Pennsylvania; it lay across Spring Creek in Coleville, on the tracks of the Bellefonte Central Railroad. Gephart attempted to negotiate a new connection with, and trackage rights over, the Bellefonte Central to allow the Central Railroad to reach the furnace, but was rebuffed. Instead, Gephart announced that the Central Railroad would build its own branch directly to the furnace. The new branch would cross Spring Creek and the PRR line to reach Bellefonte Furnace and a connection with the Bellefonte Central's tracks. Its construction was delayed when the assistant superintendent of the PRR's Tyrone Division attempted to forcibly block the construction of the bridge piers on either side of the PRR right-of-way by dumping coal and rubbish into their foundations. A few days later, however, Gephart had the last word in the matter: PRR executives arrived to announce that the Central Railroad's construction had been properly authorized, and had the obstructions removed at their own railroad's expense. The new branch was opened in July 1899. Revival of the Bellefonte & Clearfield was expected at this time, but never took place.

Gephart's coup in restarting Bellefonte Furnace was repeated in 1900 with the revival of the former Valentine Furnace, now known as Nittany Furnace. After Gephart left the presidency in 1895, the furnace, the Nittany Valley Railroad, and associated ore lands had come into the hands of the Empire Steel and Iron Company. However, Empire essentially abandoned Nittany Furnace in April 1900, allowing the Commonwealth Trust Company, which held a lien on the property, to buy it at a sheriff's sale. As with Bellefonte Furnace, Gephart assembled a group of Eastern investors to purchase the furnace from Commonwealth Trust and rehabilitate it. The new company had the furnace back in blast on June 5, 1902. However, Gephart only anticipated running Nittany Furnace during times of peak market demand for iron.

Gephart was also involved in more diverse business enterprises. In 1901, he was a director of the American Central Contracting Company, whose board included other railroad and coal investors. On April 24, 1903, Gephart obtained a charter for the Bellefonte Coal and Coke Company, which bought a tract of 1,100 acres (450 ha) of coal land near Winslow, Jefferson County, Pennsylvania, on the Pennsylvania and North Western Railroad. Coke ovens were planned there, which would have provided fuel for the two furnaces.

Among all his business activity, Gephart still found time to take part in the civic life of the community. He organized a subscription drive to get the Bellefonte YMCA out of debt in October 1895. He was a director of the organization in 1904, when the YMCA was raising funds for a new building. In 1903, he was vice-president of the newly organized Nittany Country Club. Gephart was also a trustee of his alma mater, the Bellefonte Academy.

Wes Gephart died suddenly at his home in Bellefonte, of a stroke, on February 14, 1905. Contemporary obituaries praised his "indomitable energy and perseverance," an "active influence" in the church, Sunday school, and YMCA, and asserted that "no one living in Bellefonte...could interest and command capital as Mr. Gephart did." After his death, Bellefonte and Nittany Furnaces, though owned by separate groups of investors, came under a single management. The Bellefonte Furnace investors were more closely tied to the Central Railroad, and that furnace operated somewhat more frequently than Nittany, to generate traffic for the railroad. The superintendency of the Central Railroad was assumed by Gephart's son Wallace, who was soon made its president.

However, Gephart's industrial empire would not long survive him. The formation of large, vertically integrated firms such as U.S. Steel and Bethlehem Steel made independent blast furnaces such as Bellefonte and Nittany increasingly uneconomical to run. The Panic of 1907 proved to be the final blow for the furnaces, which operated only sporadically afterwards. Bellefonte Furnace went out of blast for the last time in December 1910; Nittany Furnace, in January 1911. The Central Railroad survived a little longer, but it could not cover its operating expenses without the traffic provided by the iron furnaces. Its last train ran in November 1918.