Today, this site is on the National Register of Historic Places and encompasses 360 unspoiled acres that have remnants of the mines and furnaces that once thrived here. In 1865, workers constructed a maze of iron mines, a pair of roasting ovens, a blast furnace, a steel puddling furnace, and a rolling mill. With the industry picking up the pace, the town expanded. More buildings were constructed including a grist mill, creamery, lumber yard, general store, hotel, boarding houses, and a tavern. The hurricane of 1938 wiped out the remaining wooden structures that were left from the town's short heydays.
Signs explain how granite quarries have prospered at the site for nearly two centuries and how the light gray Roxbury stone was prized for building churches, bridges and fine homes from New York City to New Britain. There are blast furnaces and roasting ovens on this fascinating site with interpretive signs that show diagrams and sketches of how iron ore was turned into steel. There are mining tunnels on the site and air shafts but these are closed to the public because they are not stable. The tunnels provide shelter for colonies of area bats that are vitally important to the environment of Connecticut.
A visit to Mine Hill offers a glance into our industrial past in a setting of breathtaking natural beauty with four miles of hiking trails at the nature preserve. The blue loop trail begins at the industrial site, climbs up the Donkey Trail past a reservoir, two mine tunnels and a series of grated air shafts, which now serve as entryways to several bat hibernacula. The trail continues past massive granite cliffs, eventually descending back to the Shepaug River valley, past an abandoned quarry and back to the furnace complex. Mine Hill Preserve is located in Roxbury off Mine Hill Road, just off Rte, 67.
No comments:
Post a Comment