The Airdrie Furnace Site lay east five miles from here, where a fifty-five-foot furnace and stone machinery house were built by Robert Alexander in 1855. He brought in Scottish workers who were unfamiliar with American ores, and the furnace never produced any salable iron. Alexander named the town of Airdrie for his Scottish home, and it was incorporated in 1858. Union General Don Carlos Buell lived there from 1866 to 1898, but his plan for an industrial city at Airdrie never materialized. Kentucky was a major iron producer beginning in 1791, ranking third in the United States in the 1830s and eleventh in 1965. Charcoal timber, native ore, and limestone supplied numerous furnaces that made pig iron, utensils, and munitions in the Hanging Rock, Red River, Between Rivers, Rolling Fork, and Green River regions. The old charcoal furnace era ended because of depletion of ore and timber and the growth of railroads.