The Old Furnace Town Heritage Museum is an outdoor museum near Snow Hill Maryland that uses a living history format with live demonstrations to re-create a vanished 19th century community. The museum contains various historic buildings, including most importantly the Nassawango Iron Furnace

Nassawango Iron Furnace Site

The Nassawango Iron Furnace was built in 1830 by the Maryland Iron Company to produce iron from bog ore deposits in its vicinity. It is notable for its innovative use of a "hot blast" technique for smelting the iron, which had only been developed in England around 1828, and which may have been...

, an early 19th-century brick blast furnace

Blast furnace

A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally iron.In a blast furnace, fuel and ore and flux are continuously supplied through the top of the furnace, while air is blown into the bottom of the chamber, so that the chemical reactions...

 that was used to smelt

Smelting

Smelting is a form of extractive metallurgy; its main use is to produce a metal from its ore. This includes iron extraction from iron ore, and copper extraction and other base metals from their ores...

 bog iron

Bog iron

Bog iron refers to impure iron deposits that develop in bogs or swamps by the chemical or biochemical oxidation of iron carried in the solutions. In general, bog ores consist primarily of iron oxyhydroxides, commonly goethite...

 ore to make pig iron

Pig iron

Pig iron is the intermediate product of smelting iron ore with a high-carbon fuel such as coke, usually with limestone as a flux. Charcoal and anthracite have also been used as fuel...

. Other buildings, all of which have been moved to the site, include a church, a store, and several houses, one of which is used as an information center.

R. Frank Jones Museum

This building was Initially constructed in 1869 and moved to the Furnace Town Village in 1977. The museum contains exhibits on the history of the local area and processing of pig iron

Pig iron

Pig iron is the intermediate product of smelting iron ore with a high-carbon fuel such as coke, usually with limestone as a flux. Charcoal and anthracite have also been used as fuel...

.

External links

• Furnace Town Living Heritage Museum (official website)
• Furnace Town Living Heritage Museum (Ocean City Vacation and Hotels Guide website)