The upper area of the furnace complex was the stockyard, where raw materials were delivered, stockpiled, sorted, and graded, and when Buckeye Furnace was operating it was busy with teamsters unloading limestone, iron ore, and charcoal. The extensive forests that once covered the Hanging Rock Region supplied the charcoal that fueled the iron furnaces, but each year thousands of trees were cut and turned into charcoal through controlled burning, with little thought given to replanting depleted land. In 1880, the Charcoal Iron Workers Journal warned that the timber supply was nearly exhausted, and as the forests disappeared the price of charcoal increased. By the 1880s, furnaces fueled by coke, a much cheaper fuel, were producing iron so inexpensively that charcoal furnaces were forced to close. After the furnaces closed, the land was abandoned, but during the last half of the twentieth century the forests returned, with young beech and maple replacing the mature growth that had been destroyed, and over time more oaks were expected to restore the forest's earlier appearance.