Long Pond Ironworks in Hewitt, NJ

Friends of Long Pond Ironworks
P.O. Box 809
Hewitt, NJ 07421
(973) 657-1688

My last article was about the old ironmaster’s residence at Ringwood Manor. Today I’m writing about the site of the ironworks itself, which was only a few miles to the west of the ironmaster’s manor.

Conveniently located on the banks of the swiftly flowing Wanaque River, Long Pond Ironworks plantation was founded in 1766. The wilderness was cleared for roadways, forges, furnaces and homes were built, and supporting farms were created. A furnace and a large forge were constructed, and the Wanaque was dammed in order to power a steady blast of air to the furnace chamber.

In 1853, American industrialists Peter Cooper and Abram S. Hewitt purchased the Long Pond works as an addition to their Trenton-based iron empire. The Civil War created a surge in demand for iron products, and Cooper and Hewitt responded by building two new furnaces, waterwheels and a casting house at Long Pond. Gun barrels for the Union Army were manufactured from iron cast at this site. By the 1870s, Pennsylvania coal fields and Great Lakes region iron mines had become the most cost-effective sources of fuel and ore, and in 1882 the last fires were extinguished at Long Pond Ironworks.

Within the Long Pond Ironworks Historic District you can see the ruins of three iron blast furnaces. There are remains from iron forges, their hydro-power systems, a few worker’s homes and commercial buildings that were important parts of daily life in the old village. There’s a small visitor center with a room containing artifacts recovered from the ironworks, and interpretive signs explain some of the more important stops along the trail through the historic site.

The Stone Double House may be the oldest residence in the village, possibly dating to the 1760s. The term “double house” usually indicates a pair of semi-detached houses; notice the separate entrances.

Behind the Stone Double are the remains of an ice-pond dam. First you build a dam, then you let the water in the pond freeze up during the winter, then you cut the ice up into blocks, and then …

… you store it in an ice house. It seems to me that this ice house was basically a large, protective cellar. In the middle of the first photo you can see a doorway in the very center of the front wall (to the immediate right of a tree), and the second photograph shows the view looking into that doorway, down into the cellar.

These are the ruins of the company store that they are from the original store that was built in the 1760’s and then rebuilt in the 1860’s. Everyone in the village shopped and conducted their business here, most likely on credit collateralized by wages to be earned.

The Manager’s House, built around the time of the Civil War for the on-site furnace manager.

Canals and aqueducts connected a Wanaque River waterfall to the tops of waterwheels, which in turn powered huge piston engines that blasted air into the furnace fire. The waterwheels are enclosed in protective shelters, so they can only be photographed from up close.

This is all that remains of the original iron furnace, built in 1766 by Peter Hasenclever. During the Revolutionary War it was used to make equipment for the Colonial Army.

This is the foundation for what was once a steam-powered sawmill, constructed in 1913.