Carrie Iron Furnace — Life Downstream

On May 5, 2012 my fiancée, our friend Brian, and I visited the old Carrie Iron Furnace in Rankin, PA. Rankin sits on the Monongahela River 8 miles south of Pittsburgh. The furnaces produced iron for use at the Homestead Steel Works (now a shopping center with only fleeting references to its past) across the river from the 1880s until 1982. Currently the facility is part of the Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area and it is possible to tour the site. What I enjoyed most about the tour was that our guides and many of the people at the site had worked there and were able to share deeply personal stories. While many Americans are familiar with the story of Pittsburgh and other rust belt cities, visiting the Carrie Furnace adds depth.

If you're in the Pittsburgh area, I highly recommend the tour. It is worth every penny to understand the history from this perspective. The tour fee is also going to ensure Pittsburgh's industrial history is preserved.

Only furnaces 6 and 7 remain

This is the actual furnace, more modern than some of the ruins of stone furnaces so common in parts of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio, yet some argue it failed to keep up with the times
The final product flowed out of the furnace here

From the Carrie Furnace if you follow Braddock Avenue through Braddock and past the U.S. Steel Edgar Thompson Works (one of few functioning relics of Pittsburgh’s steel past) you will find yourself among the remains of the expansive Westinghouse Labs in East Pittsburgh, which once produced the machines behind great powerplants. At the center of this complex, now a business park, you’ll cross Electric Avenue. If you continue on Braddock past Electric you’re on the original alignment of the Lincoln Highway into and out of the eastern part of Pittsburgh. To join up with the current alignment of U.S. Route 30, continue to follow Penn as it turns into Greensburg Pike. The bridge crossing Turtle Creek slightly realigned the Lincoln Highway in 1925, prior to 1925 the route turned onto Airbrake Avenue and then made a right turn onto 11^th toward Turtle Creek where one would make the crossing.