Hopewll Furnace National Historic Site is located on the ancestral home of the Lenapi people.

Date of Visit: July 26, 2025

His name was Mark Bird, and the place he chose was in French Creek Valley, Berks County, Pennsylvania…

Those words are forever etched in my memory. More than 20 years ago, I heard those words once per week as a camp counselor when we took our rotating group of day campers to Hopewell Furnace. 

Hopewell Furnace is a National Historic Site, one of 19 sites within the Commonwealth that are administered by the National Park Service. 

The original furnace was started in the early 1770s, and a small village for employees grew around it. That village remained largely intact until the Great Depression when the land was identified as a potential recreation area. The Civilian Conservation Corps were sent in to clear the land to create a recreation park, but instead discovered a treasure trove of history, including complete accounting log books dating back more than a century. It was determined that this history deserved to be preserved, and it was designated a National Historic Site in 1938. 

I did not remember these facts from those visits 20 years ago. Instead, I heard them while taking my seven-year-old son for an afternoon visit in the summer of 2025. We were only planning to walk the grounds for a short time, but we had arrived just in time for the orientation film and walking tour so we decided to stay. 

The film, thankfully, has been updated in the two decades since my last visit. The high-quality presentation shows reenactors in clear HD, making it easy to imagine what life might have been like at the site during its heyday. 

Our ranger-led tour had locals like us but also out-of-state visitors from New York and Maryland. 

Leaving the Visitors Center, we headed down a gravel path to learn about the charcoal-making process. Logs were stacked underneath a tarp while we were there, with the intent to keep them dry until the following weekend when the fire would be burning as part of an anniversary weekend. 

But we were able to get enough of a sense of the work involved in making charcoal, and the long hours that men would tend the fires. Nearby was a replica hut, a small space where a man would live alone for days while they tended the charcoal fires. 

The charcoal was then taken downhill by wagon to a barn where loads of it are on display today. 

The barn sits above the furnace. The charcoal would be loaded on carts and wheeled across a short walkway to the top of the furnace where it would be loaded with iron ore and limestone in alternating layers. 

Standing there in the balmy summer heat, it’s hard to comprehend the 2000-degree temperatures coming out of the furnace. 

We were sweating as we walked down to the lower level of the furnace. It was here that the molten iron ore would have been poured out, either into molds to make things like stoveplates, or into grooves in the ground where it would become pig iron (named because the pattern which looks like E’s stacked on top of each other also, apparently, resembles a mother pig nursing her young). 

After walking out to get a brief introduction to the village, we headed back inside the furnace to make our own castings. 

Of course we weren’t using molten iron ore for our projects, but we were using typical tools and supplies that would have been used to do sand-casting. We filled a wooden box two-thirds with sand before placing a small mold inside. We then dusted it with powder to ensure the sand wouldn’t stick to it before filling it to the top. 

From there, we had to pry out the original mold, which left a very clear, very detailed imprint in the sand. The ranger in charge then filled our mold with a type of quick-drying plaster so we would have a souvenir to take home. 

While the plaster dried, my son and I took a brief walk. Instead of exploring the outbuildings, we took a side trail through the woods that led to Hopewell Lake. Here, the French Creek is dammed, delivering water to power the waterwheel at the furnace, but mostly providing recreation to visitors at the adjacent French Creek State Park. 

It’s a nice loop trail that is actually part of the Horse-Shoe Trail that connects Valley Forge to the Appalachian Trail. (We also crossed over the Horse-Shoe Trail on our ride on the Lebanon Valley Rail Trail). 

The dam provides a great scenic vista overlooking the park, and the trails continue into French Creek Park and beyond for anyone looking to extend their outdoor time. 

We returned to the furnace as our plaster castings were nearly dry. Even though everyone had already gathered inside, the kids all got to take turns pulling the rope for the furnace bell. It’s the same bell that would have alerted Hopewell’s workers that the iron was ready to pour.

If we had explored the other buildings, we could have probably spent another hour at the site. But we had arrived in late afternoon and by the time we were done with our casting, the reenactors who had been using their spinning wheels on the porch of the Ironmaster’s Mansion were loading their historic yarn-making tools into their cars. 

But we still had fun and learned a lot about one of the most important industries from Pennsylvania’s past. 

And now I have some new (and better) memories of Hopewell Furnace that I will also never forget.

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