Built in 1846, Catherine Furnace was one of three Page County furnaces operating during the Civil War. Nearly all that remains of the cold blast furnace and its once-huge operation is the 30-foot-tall main stack, though 22,500 acres once supplied wood for charcoal, iron ore, limestone, and food. With labor scarce, local whites, free blacks, and slaves worked there to furnish the Confederacy with pig iron, which wagons carried to Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, the largest such operation in the South and the "Ironmaker of the Confederacy." The furnace also produced solid cannon shot and perhaps a few cannon tubes, while Furnace #2 on Naked Creek made cannon balls as well. Ironmaster Noah Foltz, a secret Union sympathizer, helped Federal soldiers escape from Page County across Massanutten Mountain to Fort Valley, but after mistakenly helping Confederates disguised as Union soldiers escape, he was arrested and soon released on bond to continue work at the furnace. The 1st Vermont Cavalry made the only known attempt to destroy the furnace on May 7, 1862, but because of the ensuing engagement at Somerville Heights, the cavalry contingent never reached it.