In 1845, Lemuel Pomeroy II, a prominent gun manufacturer from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and his sons established the Copake Iron Works at the western edge of the Litchfield Iron District, where dependable water power, high-quality iron-ore deposits, limestone, and extensive hardwood forests for charcoal production supported iron manufacturing. The Pomeroys built a charcoal-fired blast furnace, a refinery forge, a water-powered trip-hammer, and a dam, brought in immigrant laborers, and donated land and money for a church. The iron works soon became the nucleus of a thriving community served by the New York and Harlem Railroad. Frederick Miles purchased the works in 1862, and in 1871 he and his sons rebuilt the furnace. Over the next 30 years, they added a large steam engine house, a foundry shed, and charcoal storage barns, and in the late 1870s built an ironworks railroad to move raw materials around the complex and carry pig iron to the nearby New York and Harlem Railroad tracks. In the 1880s, charcoal iron production in the Litchfield Iron District reached its peak as high-quality iron supplied Northeast foundries. Operations at Copake's furnace ended in 1903, when high-capacity, coal-fired steel mills in the Midwest and South began producing a comparable product at lower cost. The foundry continued for another 20 years, making specialty castings and plow bottoms for William A. Miles's Copake Plow Works. New York State bought the property in 1928, and it became part of the newly created Taconic State Park. Soon afterward, the frame buildings enclosing the blast furnace and foundry were torn down, and portions of the furnace's marble block were removed for retaining walls along the road to Bash Bish Falls.