Fitchburg Furnace was the center of a bustling mountain community with mills, shops, and homes for more than 100 families engaged in smelting iron ore from local iron and wood resources. Reputedly the largest furnace of its type in the world, it was designed by Fred Fitch, completed by Sam Worthley in 1869, and known as the Red River Furnace as the region’s first attempt at improved furnace construction. Its twin stacks, Blackstone and Chandler, were built in a solid rectangular mass of sandstone with a 40 x 80 foot base and 60 feet high, while the stacks themselves were 50 feet high and 12.5 feet across inside. Using a steam-powered air blast and charcoal for fuel, the combined stacks could produce 25 tons of pig iron per day and turned out more than 16,000 tons before closing in 1873. The furnace cost more than 100,000 dollars without machinery and steam engines, and nearly 160,000 dollars with machinery and fittings included. Its brief success ended during the great financial panic of 1873, when over-speculation in western railroads reduced demand because most of its iron had gone into car wheels and rails, and the later discovery of rich, more accessible, and better quality iron ore beds in Alabama’s Birmingham District made competition impractical and brought the local iron industry to an end. After the furnace fires went out, the once-noisy industrial site fell silent and eventually became a modern-day attraction. The U.S. Forest Service acquired Fitchburg Furnace on April 6, 1973, as a donation from Joyce Russell Broaddus and Toska Russell Middleton, and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 17, 1974.