New QR codes guide guests of Beckley Furnace

NORTH CANAAN — The historic Beckley Furnace Industrial Monument has come into the modern age. QR codes have been placed on all the interpretive signs at the site located on Lower Road on the north bank of the Blackberry River.

Christian Allyn, a member of the Friends of Beckley group, explained the codes will assist visitors in learning about all the details of the furnace and its environs.

Volunteer guides for years would welcome guests and give tours, but those numbers have dwindled. “We decided we couldn’t have those Saturday tours because we didn’t have volunteers to lead them. In 2024, five of them were no longer available,” Allyn said.

Recently a crew set out to install the stickers to allow for self-tours of the site, which preserves a 19th-century iron-making blast furnace, which turned iron ore, charcoal and limestone into pig iron.

The QR codes link to webpages on beckleyfurnace.org with text, photos or videos about the history of the site along withmaps to guide guests.

The 12 acres were designated a state park in 1946 and was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Situated in a rural setting, it is a popular tourist destination, where visitors can not only learn the history of the site, but enjoy picnicking and fishing as well.

The main furnace is a large stone structure, 40-feet tall and 30-feet per side at the base, gradually sloping to 20 feet at the top. About 100 yards upriver is the dam, a stone structure with a penstock providing access to a turbine chamber. Further downstream are the remnants of two more dams and furnaces, and there are large piles of slag mounded on the south side of the river, which visitors love to collect. For most of the time, the furnace was owned by Barnum & Richardson Co.

The furnace was built by John Adam Beckley in 1847 and continued to operate until 1919. It was the second of three working blast furnaces built at the site; a fourth furnace was under construction in the early years of the 20th century but was never operated. The works successfully adapted to changing conditions, but was unable to compete on scale, and closed in the early 1920s.

The stack was restored by the state in 1999.

The dam that was built on the Blackberry River to provide power for the furnace and other industrial operations was repaired by the state in 2010.