The George's Creek Coal and Iron Company was founded in 1835, and in 1836 an act of the General Assembly of Maryland granted John H. Alexander and Philip Tyson the right to form it. Between 1837 and 1839, the company built an iron furnace in Lonaconing, Maryland, in the George's Creek valley between Frostburg and Westernport. The furnace was a truncated pyramid fifty feet square at the base, twenty-five feet square at the top, and fifty feet high, larger than earlier furnaces that had been thirty feet high. Brick and lime for mortar were made on the premises, stones were selected, cut, and dressed to fit, and some stones weighed as much as 7,200 pounds and were hoisted with a wooden crane and windlass made by carpenters. Sandstone for the hearth was specially chosen to withstand intense heat. Four supporting stone piers surrounded the central stack, iron rods were inserted at five levels to support the furnace and counteract expansion and contraction, and the hearth in the front, or tymp, was where molten iron flowed into the sows. Tuyere arches on both sides held cast-iron tubes that directed hot air into the hearth, and alleyways through the piers let workers move between arches to check and adjust the blast. Because the furnace had to be fed from the top, it was built against a hillside with supporting wing walls and an arch connecting it with the roadway for hauling materials across. Its blast machinery used a sixty-horsepower steam engine fed by five boilers, with steam cylinders eighteen inches in diameter and eight feet long operating at fifty psi, driving a blast cylinder five feet in diameter and eight feet long. This forced about 3,500 cubic feet of air per minute at 2.5 psi through the system, with a large iron regulator smoothing the airflow. The air passed through pipes in the boiler furnaces, was heated to 700 degrees F, and entered the blast furnace through two large water-cooled tuyeres; when the water supply failed, the furnace had to use a less efficient cold blast. The first run of good iron came from the furnace on May 17, 1839, and by May 23 it was producing six tons per day. Seven tons of coal were required to produce one ton of cast metal. The furnace operated from 1839 to 1855, employed 260 workers, and turned out sixty tons of pig iron per week. The company's original plan was to haul pig iron by horse and wagon to Williamsport, Maryland, for canal shipment to Washington, D.C., but after the B and O Railroad reached Cumberland in 1852, pig iron was taken by tram cars to Clarysville and loaded onto railroad cars. Canal shipping was cheaper but much slower, while rail shipping cost too much. The furnace also could not compete with Pennsylvania pig iron made with anthracite coal, and Congress had lowered the tariff on imported iron products, making iron from Wales cheaper. The Lonaconing Furnace was the first in America to successfully make pig iron using coal and coke rather than charcoal. In its last active year, 1,860 tons were produced, after which it was shut down and abandoned. In 1973, through the efforts of Katherine Harvey and the Lonaconing Junior Chamber of Commerce, the furnace was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and it has since undergone extensive repair work for preservation.