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DRP
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# Posted: 5 Oct 2026 08:11pm
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I was looking through old pics. Way back in the day. Dad was working in the neighborhood and a local eccentric handyman/ house painter/ archaeologist was rooting around. He found the remains of Thoreau's cabin. He hired Dad and they built a replica on the man's property nearby while pouring through the book, which is not a construction manual.
There was another guy that would come around and check out the trees that they would fell while clearing lots for houses. He would take a tree here and there, have them sawn and make furniture from them. A few clients ended upo with furniture from trees from their land. Dad is getting older, he said he was George, a Japanese guy. I asked, Nakashima? Dad said "Yeah, do you remember him?" I said no, but I know he did allright :D.
I've got another old pic of me, big Sis and Grandad in Walden pond from that period. Mom said I was blue from the cold but wanted to keep playing in the pond :D. Funny, that was over 60 years ago but is still vivid in my memory.
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gcrank1
Moderator
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# Posted: 5 Oct 2026 09:01pm
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I read Walden as a HS Freshman, and a bit later A Sand County Almanac, both made a lasting impression that led to 'cabineering'.
GREAT Stuff!
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DRP
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# Posted: 5 Oct 2026 09:38pm
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I reread A Sand County Almanac last winter. 
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DRP
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# Posted: 5 Oct 2026 10:06pm
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From my drive today, I guess this would have been around Thoreau's time period . We had an iron gate powder coated for the job. The shop is on one of those furnace roads. There are, well, I think today I know of 8 furnaces along this line through the mountains. They were not all on line at the same time but each one consumed acres per day of charcoal.
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branbin
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# Posted: 8 Oct 2026 09:20am
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Those old iron furnaces are fascinating. Hard to picture now how much forest went into keeping them running, especially when you see how quiet and overgrown the sites are today. Nice that the stone stacks are still standing after all this time.
Did the shop owner know much about the history of the one in your photo? I always wonder how many of these are hiding along back roads that people drive past without a second look.
Also, great story about your Dad and the cabin replica. Building it straight from Walden must have taken some guesswork.
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DRP
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# Posted: 8 Oct 2026 04:24pm - Edited by: DRP
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This is a link to some iron related pictures taken in that area, if you download the large image and zoom in, those are old steamshovels on narrow gauge rails;
https://nwhistory.info/locations/CrippleCreek/USGSphotos.php
A good description of the workings is here;
https://npshistory.com/series/symposia/new_river/sec10.htm
And of the individual furnaces is here;
https://npshistory.com/series/symposia/new_river/sec11.htm#94
If you noticed the furnace in the first pics, it still looks pretty much the same a century later, it only ran for a few years before a charge froze inside. At the last link, just above, scroll down to Noble Furnace and note the next to last paragraph, probably a disgruntled furnace master let it chill. There is a frozen charge beside the furnace at Foster Falls. They must have opened up the tap arch, drug it out and then rebuilt it.
One old timer remembered as boys "skating" on the mud flat below the Eagle furnace's ore washer (buddle is another name for that equipment). The boards from the ore washer in the pic is now the siding on a nearby barn. The owner of that barn found the forge hammer in the creek while fishing years ago and hauled it out.
I didn't get around to talking about the furnaces with the shop owner, we did talk about the shot tower that is also nearby on the river. It was I believe the first shot tower in the colonies. There are also lead mines nearby. This is right along the boundary between the Blue Ridge and the Valley and Ridge upheavals. Metals washed down and out of the Blue Ridge into the shallows, and then that calcareous sedimentary rock went through a subsequent bad driving event with Africa forming the Shenandoah, Holston and other valleys and long ridges in that band.
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