The Schoolcraft Blast Furnace operated at this site for nearly ten years beginning in 1868, using steam engines powered by water from Munising Creek to provide the hot air needed to turn iron ore, limestone, and charcoal into pig iron. Much of the iron was used for railway ties or as an additive for other metals, and at its height the furnace produced as much as 35 tons of pig iron per day. Supplies of ore and charcoal eventually ran out, forcing the furnace to close in 1877. The iron industry employed almost half the town's 1000 residents, and when the furnace shut down the town fell on hard times and many residents left to seek work elsewhere. In 1901 the idle machinery was sold, melted down, and recast for other uses, leaving few traces of the once busy iron town beyond piles of rock rubble, flakes of slag, and memories. Today the water from Munising Falls flows freely into Lake Superior, and the waterfall, fed by a natural spring a few miles back from the top of the ridge, continues to carve the sandstone deeper and wider over time as the forest has reclaimed the site for wildlife and year-round beauty.