Hopewell Furnace preserves a rural charcoal-fired iron plantation near Elverson, Pennsylvania, one of the best surviving examples of the self-contained ironmaking communities that supplied early America. Founded around 1771 by ironmaster Mark Bird, it was active by 1772 and produced cannon and shot for the Continental Army and Navy during the Revolutionary War. After Bird lost the property in 1788, Hopewell prospered under Daniel Buckley and the Brooke family, especially from the 1820s through the 1840s, when stove production peaked. Ironmaking ended in 1883 as new fuels and larger mills made charcoal furnaces obsolete. Preserved and restored in the twentieth century, it remains a rare industrial landscape where early iron production can still be understood.