The submitted text and pictures (long post)

So here is what I submitted to Clearwater.  Note that the directions from the sign are unclear, as I did not know where the sign was to be situated.  For what this became on the panel, see the next post....

Harmony Forge and Milesburg Ironworks

Milesburg Ironworks, probably 1870s

The Milesburg iron furnace stood on this spot for over two hundred years.  The falling waters of Spring Creek here in Muncy Gap powered a sizeable iron manufacturing complex.  Begun in the last years of the eighteenth century, an iron furnace stood where the circular iron feature sits in the lawn [insert direction from sign here].  A dam across the rapids, originally of timber and later of concrete, formed a large pond to the south that drove waterwheels and turbines to blow air into the blast furnace and then to power mechanical forge hammers and rolling machinery.

The furnace originally processed iron ore from local ore banks and then from the Scotia area.  In 1830, Gen. James Irvin expanded the furnace to include a forge mill and later a rolling mill.  In 1864 the complex was purchased by Dr. J.M. McCoy and James H. Linn and by the end of the nineteenth century, this forge included a 6-hammer bloomery that produced 2,500 tons of charcoal blooms annually.  The furnace also cast specialty castings, such as the window lintels in the small square brick office building that still stands on the private property to the north.

Postcard of the McCoy and Linn
 Ironworks before 1922

By the turn of the century McCoy & Linn had three puddling furnaces and two heating furnaces in the forge mill, and three rolling trains that turned out all sizes of soft iron bar and wire rods (2,250 and 1,350 tons annually, respectively).  McCoy & Linn also built a wire works and a chain factory half a mile upstream from this complex.

Between the World Wars, the ironworks declined and by the Great Depression it was largely out of business, though a new expanded rolling mill had been built across the river in the 1910s when the concrete dam was installed.  By 1931 McCoy had then dismantled the furnace and forge mill buildings on this side of the river and in 1926 built a private hydroelectric generating building on the east end of the dam, which provided electrical power until the 1980s.

Milesburg Ironworks, c.1930

Development of the Milesburg Iron Works and Canal
(left: late 19th century; right: early 20th century)

Map of the Bald Eagle and Spring
Creek Navigation Co. canal, 1834

Bald Eagle and Spring Creek Canal

Bellefonte has been the county seat of Centre Co. since 1800 because of the idea that a canal could be built to the Susquehanna, though it took nearly a half-century to realize that idea.  By the 1830s, with the success of the Erie Canal (opened 1825) connecting Albany to Buffalo as well as the planned successes of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (opened 1831), canal fever gripped the nation.  The west branch of the Susquehanna Canal had made the river reliably navigable to Lock Haven and in 1834 Bellefonte—already an important iron-producing city as well as the natural outlet for agricultural produce from the Nittany and Penns valleys—wanted to connect into that transportation network. 

A joint stock company, backed by State guarantees of interest but subscribed to by the local ironmasters, was formed to build the Bald Eagle and Spring Creek Navigation Company canal from Bellefonte to Lock Haven.  Designed to have the same size locks as the Pennsylvania State Canal system (begun 1824), by 1840 it was completed from Lock Haven to Milesburg and then on to Bellefonte by 1848.  The canal operated successfully for 17 years, bringing in at least $4000 annually to the company as well as great prosperity to Bellefonte.  It was, however, largely put out of commission to barge traffic by a spring freshet in 1865.  Although repairs were contemplated, by this time the railroad made them unviable and the canal declined into a series of disconnected watercourses.  They remained mostly watered and some of the locks held water until their wooden gates rotted away in the twentieth century.

Canal lock similar to that on the BESCN
C&O canal (Lock 34) near Sharpsburg, MD
[HABS, MD,22-HARF.V,8-1]

You are standing just west of the upper basin of lock no. 4 and the remains of the lock are about 80yds. to the north.  The iron bridge to Harmony Mansion sits over the former upper lock gates, and one side of the stonework is still in reasonable repair.  Lock no. 5, another 300yds. downstream is in slightly better condition.  This parking area now stands in the basement of the forge mill by the stone and concrete wall that separated it from the canal, which has now been filled with about 5ft. of sediment from behind the dam.  If you walk into the canal through the gap in the wall, to your left you will see the remains of the stone foundations of the charging bridge to the furnace, seen in the photo [insert direction to photo 1].