Pactolus Furnace was built in 1824 by Joseph McMurtry and David L. Ward on the site of an earlier bloomer forge. Its stone stack used charcoal fuel, and its air blast machinery was powered by a dam five and a half feet high in the Little Sandy River. The furnace had a capacity of about three tons of iron daily, mainly shipped via the Ohio River, and its last blast came before 1835. Kentucky had been a major iron producer since 1791, ranking third in the United States in the 1830s and eleventh in 1965. Charcoal timber, native ore, and limestone supplied numerous furnaces in the Hanging Rock, Red River, Between Rivers, Rolling Fork, and Green River regions, where pig iron, utensils, and munitions were made. The old charcoal furnace era ended with depletion of ore and timber and the growth of railroads.