gallery D

Endor Iron Furnace near Sanford, N.C.

I’ve been working on a story about Endor Iron Furnace for The Herald for a few days now and I thought I really should see the structure for myself to get a better understanding of its significance. The furnace was built in the years leading up to the Civil War. Sitting just a stone throw away from the Deep River, the furnace churned out iron ore to be used for munitions and railroad equipment for nearly two decades before the local mineral deposits ran dry.

In 1874, the furnace was abandoned. For more than a century it sat alone and forgotten in the woods two miles off of the nearest road.

In recent years, local advocates have been trying to raise money to turn the furnace and the adjacent land into a state park, but they’ve had difficulty raising support for their cause because people just don’t know what the furnace is. Hopefully a recent turn of events will change that. Read more about that in The Herald next week.

I love finding new trails to explore and finding a cool historical site along the way makes it even more worthwhile. While it may not be the best time to be raising money to build a new state park (or maybe it is exactly the kind of thing we should be doing during a recession, who knows?) this is a neat stretch of public property that anyone would enjoy visiting.

My pictures don’t do a good job putting the furnace in perspective. It is about 30 feet high and 25 feet wide at the base. A grown man standing beside the furnace would stand on level with the top of the hearth. The side shown above is in the best condition, while much of the smokestack on the other sides has collapsed.

Here’s a few more pictures.

I've been playing around with white balance settings, trying to bring out the richest colors without making the images unnatural.

On the trail to Endor.

I’ve always been an advocate of increased rail use. Unfortunately, most public discussion about trains comes in the form of a negative blitzkrieg attacking the industry after a freight train blasts through a family sedan. I used to think that 98.3 percent of these accidents occurred when some deranged motorist feels the need to prove himself invincible by “racing” the train. I’ve been wrong all along.

Apparently, some drivers suffer from the rare handicap of not being able to see trains at all. That’s right, locomotives, freight cars, passengers, even shiny red cabooses, are all rendered invisible to these poor, unfortunate drivers.

Seriously. Take a look.

This collision took place June 7 in Bonsal, a small town about 16 miles north of Sanford. The train involved was an antique steam locomotive carrying a load of tourists on a short circuit around the town at a blazing 10 mph. The driver of the station wagon — caught totally off guard by his invisitrainitis, despite the fact that the train was almost halfway through the crossing, lights were flashing, bells were ringing, passengers were screaming — was not hurt.