The Old Furnace

The end of summer, the month of August in particular, has always been busy with family reunions. One weekend after another and the next, my parents would drive me out to the towns around Charlotte where our family lived once upon a time. This year in quarantine though, they just weren’t possible.

As a child, I always packed bathing trunks to go swimming with my siblings and cousins in waters glimmering with mica by falls on the property. In his own youth, my grandfather swam in a shot pond associated with the furnace but that had long since drained out and filled in with trees.

I’ve always thought it would be interesting to go metal detecting there but I’m not sure it has ever been seriously studied. While I credit this place with first sparking my interest in historic preservation, I think I prefer it to remain mysterious and a little unknown. Years ago, my family undertook a restoration of the Old Furnace but rather than making it like-new again, we simply stabilized whichever rocks were crumbling.

If you like this blog post, you might enjoy this previous update!