Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site

After we left Minute Man National Historical park we drove around Boston towards the Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site.  Traffic wasn't great, but we were able to get there just over an hour before it closed and were able to go through the visitor center and walk the grounds.  It was really cool to see another park focused on early industry after we had just seen Hopewell Furnace the day before.

In the 1600's, on the banks of the Saugus River, something extraordinary happened.  Explore the place where European iron makers brought their special skills to a young Massachusetts colony. This nine-acre National Park includes working waterwheels, forges, mills, an historic 17th century home, and a lush river basin.
--from Saugus Iron Works NHS website

We spotted some beautiful flowers next to the parking lot.

 There are several buildings right next to the parking lot that contain a gift shop and museum.

I really liked these posters in the gift shop as I love the old WPA style of posters used to advertise the parks in the 30s or the retro posters made in the same style.

At this site "the first successful iron works in the New World operated from 1646 to about 1670.  With skilled labor and capital imported from England, the iron works converted local raw materials into wrought iron bar and cast iron products for use by the new English colony.
--from exhibit signage

One of the exhibits is a preserved portion of an original waterwheel.
The Saugus Iron Works wheel is remarkable because of how much was preserved.  Forty percent of the wheel, wheel pit, and tailrace survived over three hundred years of burial.  From what was recovered, the wheel was originally estimated to be roughly sixteen feet in diameter and thirty inches wide.
--from exhibit signage

Once we left the museum we found a three-dimensional map of the site.

As it was so close to the end of the day there weren't any other guests wandering around as we headed towards the rebuilt buildings.
Saugus lron Works is a reconstruction of the first successful, integrated iron works in the New World. It produced wrought iron and cast iron products from 1646 to approximately 1670, utilizing the most advanced iron making technology in early Colonial times. On April 5th, 1968 the site was renamed Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site and became part of the National Park System because of its significance to the character, development and history of the United States.
--from Saugus Iron Works NHS

First we walked over towards the blast furnace.
In 1646, the original blast furnace roared to life, lit with a 3000 degree fire that was kept burning 24 hours a day for months at a time. The blast furnace is where bog ore was smelted to create cast iron "pig" bars. To do this, three types of raw materials were brought over the charging bridge and loaded into the chimney of the furnace.

• Bog ore
• Charcoal
• Gabbro

--from Saugus Iron Works NHS

 This looks just like a bridge when you're walking on it.

This is where materials would be dropped down into the furnace.  It was interesting how similar it was to the furnace we saw in the Land Between the Lakes that was built over two centuries later.

We read more about the furnace operation on this sign.

 We next walked around to see the water course leading towards the lower level of the furnace.

 A path leads right up to the furnace building.

The inside looked very familiar when compared to what we had seen at Hopewell Furnace the day before.  When the molten iron flowed into the sand it created what was called pig iron.  However, other iron items like pots, kettles, skillets, and other pieces of equipment were also created there.

There were very large bellows to help feed the furnace with sufficient air to keep the fires burning hot.

The forge building was just beyond the blast furnace.
The forge is where bars of pig iron created at the blast furnace were changed into a new kind of iron that a blacksmith was able to use. The bars of pig iron were first brought to the finery hearths. Here, they went through a complex process where portions of the bar were melted and allowed to cool multiple times. This helped burn off much of the excess carbon in the bars, which had made them too brittle to work with. Eventually, the red hot iron was consolidated into a mass called a bloom, which was removed from the hearth for further work.
--from Saugus Iron Works NHS site

No water was running, but according to a staff member we talked to I believe that it has been used before.

Inside the forge you could see the hearth and bellows used to heat up the pig iron so that it would be worked.

Next we walked to the rolling and slitting mill, which was the first building of its type to be built in the New World.

In this building, merchant bars were further worked to create other semi-finished products that blacksmiths could use. First, the bars were heated in a reverberatory furnace to make them malleable. Next, the bars went through pairs of rollers, dense iron cylinders with a small gap between them. This reshaped the bars into flat stock. These "flats" could be used to make wagon tires, saw blades, and other products.
-from Saugus Iron Works NHS site

The water was quite low when we visited as the tide was out.  Apparently the water levels change by several feet in the course of a day.

 Historically a dock like this would have served as the terminus of a route to ship items to where they were needed.

 The site was rather beautiful and we had to leave too soon.

You can see the rest of the pictures that I took at the site in this album.  After leaving Saugus we headed north to the state park where we would be camping for the next three nights as we continued to explore Boston.

~Matt