Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site

03May15

On my recent trip to Philadelphia I journeyed outside the city and visited three National Park sites on the same day. Two, I’m sure you’ve heard of – Gettysburg and Valley Forge.

The third park is not quite a household name. It’s situated between those two historic sites that I assume attract millions of visitors every year. I doubt you can say the same about Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site about an hour outside of Philadelphia.

That distance is magnified even further when you arrive at Hopewell Furnace and notice the difference between it and the city – and it from both Valley Forge and Gettysburg.

Where those two national park sites are spread out over several acres and it takes you several hours to transverse even with a car, Hopewell Furnace is a compact little park. From the “overlook” Visitor Center, you can make out almost the entire site – sans the numerous hiking trails that are typical for this type of park.

Hopewell Furnace is an historic iron making operation that was a self-contained community complete with workers’ houses, stores, a church, orchard and other facilities. Sort of an “iron plantation” in the northeast. The iron making community was established pre-Revolutionary War and made stoves, grates and cannon for years.

Since my visit was in March, the view from the Visitor Center was unrestricted with trees. The outbuildings are a distinctive style and the colorful roofs make for great photos. I can just imagine whom wonderful the view would be in the late spring when the trees green up or in October with the bright red colors. And if you tour in the fall, the orchards at Hopewell Furnace offers more than 30 varieties of apples that visitors can pick for a small fee.

The self-guided tour is relatively easy once you descend the small hill. It’s a quick jaunt from the main house to the workers’ houses and well worth the journey. Inside many of the structures you can hear stories of the individuals who resided there.

Hopewell Furnace is also a working farm with cattle, horses and sheep. One of the highlights of my visit was watching one of the horses defending his turf from an invading sheep. It was a five-minute standoff that ended when the sheep darted into the barn, away from whatever the horse thought he was protecting.

The encounter definitely wasn’t in the league of what happened at Gettysburg, but I’m guessing that the sheep was just as scared as any Confederate or Union soldier.

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