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Bluff Furnace: Chattanooga's Industrial Beginnings
This blast furnace, erected in 1854, was Chattanooga's first heavy industry. Built by the East Tennessee Iron Manufacturing Company, Bluff Furnace was one of the premier furnaces of the region.
On the high terrace overlooking the wharf at Ross's Landing, the East Tennessee Iron Manufacturing Company commanded Chattanooga's first heavy industrial plant, called Bluff Furnace. Built below the high limestone cliffs in [???] it occupies an important place in the town's history of iron manufacturing.
Incorporated in 1847, the East Tennessee Iron Manufacturing Company began its operation at the Eagle Furnace and Forge complex in Roane County. Robert Cravens, the company's principal ironmaster, settled in Chattanooga in 1851 and opened a foundry near the railyards south of town. In 1854, h completed the construction of a steam-powered, hot-blast, charcoal-fired blast furnace to smelt the hematite iron ores abundant throughout the region. When brought into blast in 1856, the furnace was the largest, most advanced facility in East Tennessee.
Cravens, and company president James A. Whiteside, also owned large iron ore and coal deposits on nearby Raccoon Mountain in partnership with a wealthy South Carolinian industrialist, Ker [???] Boyce. The owners of Bluff Furnace completed converting the plant to burn coal as a blast fuel. Although chemically less desirable than charcoal, the modified [???] form of coal was nonetheless sturdy and combusted at a high rate. In the late 1850's, Cravens, Whiteside, and Boyce began coking local coals at their Etna Mines on the line of the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad on Raccoon Mountain. In 1859-60, Bluff Furnace underwent the conversion to use coke. When refired in May 1860, it was the first coke-fired plant in the south. |