Union Forge
Union Township, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Site of a charcoal iron forge begun about 1782 by Curtis Grubb, owner of Cornwall Iron Furnace; a major user of Cornwall iron. Such forges transformed brittle pig iron into workable wrought iron. Union Forge included 1,000 acres of land, blacksmith and carpenter shops, a grist mill, and several houses. Under different owners, the forge was in regular operation until 1868. By then, rolling mills were displacing forges as refiners of iron.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
About 1782 Curtis Grubb, owner of the great Cornwall Iron Furnace, established Union Forge here to refine the pig iron his furnace produced. Charcoal-fired forges like this one hammered brittle pig iron into tough, workable wrought iron, and Union Forge grew into a small industrial village of a thousand acres with shops, a grist mill, and workers' houses. It ran under successive owners until 1868, when newer rolling mills finally rendered such hand-forging obsolete.
Why it matters
Union Forge illustrates the charcoal-iron plantations that anchored Pennsylvania's early industry and made the region a cradle of American ironmaking.
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Related people
- · Curtis Grubb
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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Beneath this ridge runs what the marker calls the first canal tunnel in America, bored in 1823 as part of the ambitious Union Canal. When the full canal opened in 1827, it linked the Schuylkill and Susquehanna watersheds, carrying boats of coal and freight across the Pennsylvania interior in the golden age before railroads. The waterway ran until 1884, and its stone-lined tunnel survives as a monument to early American engineering.
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