Summer 2024 at Beckley Furnace

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We’re happy to welcome you at Beckley Furnace!

During the summer of 2024 our Saturday hours (when there are experts on site to answer your questions, provide you with a little information about the history of Beckley Furnace and the historic iron industry of the Upper Housatonic Valley, or just chat about the park) are 10 AM until 2 PM.  Just look for us at the picnic table with the umbrella in front of the furnace.

The final Saturday session of the Summer will be Saturday, September 8.

New Beckley Furnace Video

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Theodore Perotti, a promising local filmmaker, has just provided us with a great new video he made introducing people to Beckley Furnace.  Take a look!

In this video you will see some of our most knowledgeable people giving you a glimpse into how Beckley Furnace worked. You’ll learn a little bit of history, a little bit of chemistry, and a little about the Beckley Furnace site itself.

(Special thanks to Ted, of course!  And thanks as well to Dick Paddock and Ed Kirby, whom you’ll see in the video.)

Beckley Furnace video from 1999

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Thanks to our friends at the Canaan/Falls Village Historical Society for coming up with this YouTube video that originally appeared on Connecticut Public TV.

Shot in the 1990s, it features faces that are familiar to those associated with Beckley Furnace over the years.  The faces (and voices) of Ron Jones, Ed Kirby, the late Fred Hall, and the late Fred Warner, are notable.  The furnace itself appears in the starring role, which is perfectly reasonable!   After all these years, and despite some initial flickering in the video, even if you actually watched it on CPTV, it’s well worth viewing again.

A few things to watch for, besides the four men mentioned earlier:  There are several views of the furnace with scaffolding around it during the restoration process.  Note the masons at work on on the furnace.  In the early years after restoration we had a chain link fence around the furnace, which made it a lot less photogenic — and you can see that fence in place in these views.  The account of why the Bessemer process of steel making was established in Pennsylvania instead of Northwest Connecticut is particularly poignant.

20th Anniversary

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Our 20th Anniversary….

2016 is the 20th Anniversary of the founding of the Friends of Beckley Furnace, and of the Preservation of the Furnace.

In this special year:

During this year, we’ll be sharing with you photos and other artifacts from Beckley’s past, as well as those relating to the preservation efforts themselves.  We’ll bring you recollections of those who were most closely involved in saving this structure — and the whole Beckley complex — from the effects of the passage of time. We have a few special projects in the works as well, including events you’ll want to attend.

But we’ll keep doing:

Of course, during the year we’ll continue to do what we do all the time and have done for the past 20 years:

  • –Offer our summer Saturday guided tours.
  • –Welcome visiting school groups, historical societies, and other groups with presentations and tours targeted to their interests.
  • –Add resources to this website about the history of Beckley Furnace, the iron industry, and our place in the world of the Upper Housatonic Valley and the world.
  • –Research our site and our area to learn more about how iron was made here — and what else went on here as well.
  • –Support initiatives in teacher education.
  • –Create media, especially video, to make the history clearer and easier to understand.
  • –Collaborate with other organizations, like the Falls Village/Canaan Historical Society, the Upper Housatonic Valley National Heritage Area, the Salisbury Association, and a host of others.