When Union Gen. John F. Reynolds’ I Corps marched by here on June 29, 1863, en route to Emmitsburg and soon to Gettysburg, his men were progressing “swimmingly,” while the workers of Catoctin Furnace had little time to notice because the charcoal furnaces were in full blast. The landscape then looked much different than it does today: the air was filled with smoke and ash and smelled like rotten eggs, temperatures inside the casting sheds reached upwards of 120 degrees, the mountainside was barren because it took an acre of trees a day to produce the charcoal needed to keep one furnace in blast, large pits had been dug around the area to mine iron ore, and large piles of slag from iron making were scattered in every direction. During the Civil War, John Baker Kunkel owned Catoctin Furnace, and with two furnaces in operation, production was never interrupted during the war as workers shipped three tons of pig iron a day east to larger arsenals and forges that made war material. Iron produced here was used in the manufacturing of ironclad ships like USS Monitor. Employees worked around the clock in 12-hour shifts, earning credit at the company store, and according to local tradition, lost and disoriented soldiers from both sides making their way south after the Battle of Gettysburg were offered jobs here because of the chronic labor shortage.