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.
Click HERE to see it on YouTube.
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.