On the Indiana frontier, small-scale industrial operations, such as grain mills, saw mills, cider mills, or sugar mills utilized agricultural products or natural resources, such as timber, stone, and iron ore.

In Monroe County, entrepreneur Randolph Ross saw potential in the local ore deposits. Originally from Virginia, Ross moved to Tennessee around 1810 and engaged in a number of ventures, including operating a grist mill, overseeing a lucrative saltpeter mining operation that supplied gunpowder material to the federal government, and managing roads and turnpikes.^[2] Ross also had a history of slave holding and of debt issues, having been a subject in 1836 of a Tennessee Supreme Court case involving mortgages on his property, which included both land and slaves.^[3] However, Ross also had experience working with iron from his days in his native Virginia.^[4]

In 1839, Ross, in cooperation with local land owners George Adams and James Crane, borrowed about $20,000 from investors to purchase—on contract—a large tract of land containing iron reserves located along Indian Creek near the ridge top community known locally as “Maryland Ridge.”^[5] In addition to its iron ore, the land also provided limestone and timber—both resources necessary for the creation of iron. Ross immediately started work on his operation, constructing a full-scale complex that could blast, process, and finish, the local reserves of iron ore. The furnace was up and running within a year, operating with a staff of about forty men.^[6] Some of these workers likely lived on the premises in temporary houses built along the ridge next to the furnace.^[7] Others may have been local farmers who cut and hauled wood for charcoal during the winter for extra income.^[8]

Blast furnaces, like the one constructed by Ross, created pig iron by melting unrefined iron ore in a charcoal-fueled furnace fed with hot, pressurized air. Workers would use wheelbarrows to feed the furnace stack with ore, limestone (also known as flux), and charcoal during its operation.^[9] Blast furnaces required about three tons of ore and 400 bushels of charcoal to create one ton of pig iron. It took a cord of wood (or roughly 5 ten-inch diameter trees) to obtain just 25 bushels of charcoal. That meant that it would require 16 cords of wood (or as many as 80 ten-inch diameter trees) to craft a single ton of pig iron.^[10] It could take between 100 acres to as much as a square mile of timber to supply a year's charcoal for furnace operation.^[11]

With a functioning furnace and a good supply of iron ore, Ross was well positioned for a profitable business. Listen as Indiana University archaeologist Dr. Patrick Munson explains the value of iron products in the nineteenth century:

Iron is uh almost a necessity for pioneer life: all kinds of things that you have to have and have to be made of iron and the consequence of that was in the early 1830s, cast iron products—kettles and skillets and hand irons and all those sorts of things—was nine to ten cents a pound, nine to ten dollars a hundred weight, which is an incredible sum of money in 1831 so if you could make the stuff, you were going to make money.

In addition to the cooking implements mentioned by Dr. Munson, horse shoes, wagon wheels, and agricultural tools were made of iron. Even with this evident market, however, Ross did not, it seems, make money. Ross initially sold many of his products locally as finished goods. But, for reasons not entirely clear, his blast furnace went dark not long after it started in 1840.^[12]

Many factors probably led to the collapse of his business. Ross experienced difficulties with his workers, mounting debts, and a worsening iron market as more competitors entered the industry, and prices dropped. By 1840, iron was selling at about half of what it had the previous year.^[13]

By 1841, Ross was indebted to several banks and individuals, including George Adams and James Crane. At about that time, Ross filed for bankruptcy to protect his assets. At that time, in addition to the furnace, the property contained a grist mill, a store, a residence, two steam engines, four wagons, one cart, five mules, ten horses, and three oxen.[14] Ross and his son, Randolph Ross Jr. then partnered with brothers John and Thomas Royer, third generation iron-masters from Pennsylvania, to pay their debts and restart the iron works. In 1843, the Royers refurbished the furnace and began producing iron, splitting their profits with Ross and his son. By summer of 1844, Ross sued the Royer Brothers for breach of contract and the furnace was shut down permanently.^[15]

Some sources report that Ross died in the mid to late-1840s.^[16] His son, Randolph Ross Jr., returned to Tennessee, and during the Civil War he would operate a saltpeter mine to supply the Confederate Army with gunpowder material.^[17]

All that remains today of the company are the ruins of a massive limestone furnace. In 1869, shortly after the Civil War ended and less than thirty years after the abandonment of the furnace, state geologist E.T. Cox described the complex: ^[18]

The old Virginia blast-furnace, on Indian Creek, in the western edge of Monroe County, has been out of blast for many years, but when in blast the ore was obtained close at hand from large deposits, fifteen to twenty feet thick, covering several acres. The . . . blast-furnace cannot be more than five or six feet across the boshes, and twenty to twenty-five feet high. It is poorly constructed, and the only wonder is that it made any iron at all.

-E.T. Cox, State Geologist, 1869

The ruins of the furnace at Virginia Iron Works now stands on private land, with access denied to the general public. In all, it probably ran less than twelve months during its five-year operation, but the remains of the Virginia Iron Works furnace have outlasted similar furnaces in Indiana making it a valuable piece of Indiana’s early industrial history.

[1] Unless otherwise noted, information for this vignette comes from oral history interviews with Dr. Patrick J. Munson and Cheryl Munson conducted on March 5, 2016, by staff of Weintraut & Associations.

[2] Alvin B. Wirt, The Upper Cumberland of Pioneer Times (self-published, 1954), 68, accessed November 5, 2019, http://www.ajlambert.com/history/hst_ucpt.pdf; Sarah Anne Blankenship, Archaeological and Dendrochronological Investigations at Cagle Saltpetre Cave, Van Buren County, Tennessee (Master’s Thesis, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, 2007), 30-31; “Randolph Ross,” Acts of Tennessee, 1796-1850, Tennessee State Library and Archives website, accessed November 6, 2019, https://sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com/tsla/history/misc/actsintro.htm.

[3] Galt v. Dibrell, et al. 18 Tenn (Yer.) 146 (1836), accessed November 7, 2019, available at https://books.google.com/books?id=MXo0AQAAMAAJ&dq=Galt+v+Dibrell&source=gbs_navlinks_s.

[5] Patrick O’ Bannon, Gray & Pape, Inc., “I-69 Corridor Tier 2 Studies Evansville to Indianapolis, Virginia Iron Works and Limestone Quarry Context Study, Section 4, US 231 to SR 37, Des 0300380” (Prepared for Federal Highway Administration and the Indiana Department of Transportation, 2010), 20-22.

[6] Cheryl Ann Munson and Patrick J. Munson, “Indiana’s Surviving Pioneer-Era Iron Works, The Virginia Furnace in Monroe County” (unpublished draft manuscript, 2019), 1 (used with permission of the authors).

[7] Chris Tomak, Site Visit Field Notes, October through December 2002 (Indiana Department of Transportation, 2002), 11.

[8] William J. Wayne, “Native Indiana Iron Ores and 19^th Century Ironworks,” Geological Survey Bulletin 42-E (Indianapolis: Department of Natural Resources, 1970), 6, accessed October 16, 2019, https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1579&context=geosciencefacpub.

[9] Wayne, “Native Indiana Iron Ores and 19^th Century Ironworks,” 6, 7, and 13.

[10] Wayne, “Native Indiana Iron Ores,” 7; Marshall Patmos, “Estimating Firewood From Standing Trees,” (Univ. of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, 2005), accessed December 2, 2019,  https://ucanr.edu/sites/placernevadasmallfarms/files/76320.pdf

[11] Wayne, “Native Indiana Iron Ores,” 7.

[12] O’ Bannon, Gray & Pape, Inc., “I-69 Corridor Tier 2 Studies Evansville to Indianapolis, Virginia Iron Works and Limestone Quarry Context Study,” 20.

[13] Wayne, “Native Indiana Iron Ores,” 7; Marshall Patmos, “Estimating Firewood From Standing Trees,” (Univ. of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, 2005), accessed December 2, 2019,  https://ucanr.edu/sites/placernevadasmallfarms/files/76320.pdf

[14] Wayne, “Native Indiana Iron Ores,” 7; Marshall Patmos, “Estimating Firewood From Standing Trees,” (Univ. of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, 2005), accessed December 2, 2019,  https://ucanr.edu/sites/placernevadasmallfarms/files/76320.pdf

[15] Wayne, “Native Indiana Iron Ores,” 7; Marshall Patmos, “Estimating Firewood From Standing Trees,” (Univ. of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, 2005), accessed December 2, 2019,  https://ucanr.edu/sites/placernevadasmallfarms/files/76320.pdf

[16] Wayne, “Native Indiana Iron Ores,” 7; Marshall Patmos, “Estimating Firewood From Standing Trees,” (Univ. of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, 2005), accessed December 2, 2019,  https://ucanr.edu/sites/placernevadasmallfarms/files/76320.pdf

[17] Wayne, “Native Indiana Iron Ores,” 7; Marshall Patmos, “Estimating Firewood From Standing Trees,” (Univ. of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, 2005), accessed December 2, 2019,  https://ucanr.edu/sites/placernevadasmallfarms/files/76320.pdf

[18] Wayne, “Native Indiana Iron Ores,” 7; Marshall Patmos, “Estimating Firewood From Standing Trees,” (Univ. of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, 2005), accessed December 2, 2019,  https://ucanr.edu/sites/placernevadasmallfarms/files/76320.pdf