Ghost Town Abandoned! IRON CITY UTAH, pioneer town, established 1868 for its iron production.

[Music] our location today is 22 miles west of Cedar City Utah just off Utah 56 and it is known for its Pioneer iron production this is an almost ghost town with just a few remaining residents come along and join the adventure welcome everyone to weekend escapades today hey we are in Old Iron Town formerly Iron City this town was established due to a failed attempt to mine iron from Iron Mountain but they eventually got it done and this is one of the old beehive kils going to take a closer look at that this is one of two and this one is well preserved now this is uh one of the locations that we had been to before but wanted to come up here here again and documented you know due to the fact again the weather and the elements get to this but I'll tell you what this one has gotten even better now this area was established in 1868 by Ebenezer Hanks uh and others who organized the Great Western iron manufacturing company and this is inside the kilm you can hear the echo happening already [Applause] this one's in really good condition you see along the bottom those are air vents they used to stock this with wood and get this fired up and the whole bottom of this area would be filled with coal and that's where that heat was really generated to be able to get that uh that iron ore heated up and be able to Manu manfacture it a lot of heat was in this furnace at one time now it's just a nice shaded area to get out of the sun now around this whole area is Juniper and pine so they're pinion Pines uh and inside the beehive shaped Kiln uh they lit the fires underneath and the holes you see at the bottom that we talked about now they could be plugged or opened as needed to increase or decrease the air circulation and this made took approximately 12 days for one Kil to produce 50 bushels of charcoal and this provided enough fuel to process one ton of iron ore Iron City originally had two k however due to the destructive power of weather as we've talked about and looters there's only one that still remain and this is the uh the backside of this Kil that still stands and I believe this is is where the second one was you can see the bricks on the ground and the big rocks I'm pretty sure this is the uh this is the one yeah this is it just see the signs the ruins of charcoal Kiln because of the great amounts of charcoal needed to heat the iron making furnaces two kils once operated here side by side there are no known photographs of this Kil standing so not very important to him back then not knowing that this was going to be a great piece of Utah history so over here on the uh I guess it would be the west side of iron toown you'll see foundations and we'll share with you what those are but this is really processed uh this ore I brought it over here it's pretty amazing because from the parking lot you don't see the foundation so if you don't pay attention you could miss them so you want to take your time out here and be able to explore these Trails this is where the iron production happened as producing iron in the 19th century began uh with a combination of raw ore and a mixture of fuel and Limestone and this was called a charge which burned the furnace charcoal was the fuel of choice at Iron City creating a burning and smoldering wood in an oxygen-free environment and workers at Iron City used charcoal because wood was readily available and It produced a softer more plas piece of iron and all this is the production area we'll get closer there's still a couple of stacks out here that are standing we're going to walk to the other side there's still some houses and foundations that were over there but although this was discovered by uh Peter schz in early 1868 the area known as Iron City blossomed under the Investments of Ebony or Hanks and in June 1868 Hanks established the union iron company and ler known as the Great Western iron company but in 1870 the census indicated that 97 people living in 19 households resided in Iron City the iron work is consisted of a a furnace with about 2500 lb capacity a pattern shop a molding shop and a rostra grinding device which is still over here part of it and two charcoal kils we're coming up on those foundations you can imagine how they may have been placed foundations here like a place to work in between maybe they molded the iron in these locations and these foundations here this one and this one over here are identical right here there's a big pit in the middle now I couldn't tell you what all these foundation and what this pit was but if it's circular like that it would tell me that they probably had this either hot or they use something to turn in the middle this is the very bottom of that Foundation this over here looks like there's a large foundation for what would have been a a building off of here you can see this perimeter all the way around so this is a very active Mill or smelter area I think you call it that an iron Mill Iron smelter there's an identical Foundation here like a u-shape just like the one over there on the other side so this was like an entrance and there u-shape there and over here then this big circle round area in the middle that's deeper don't know anything about uh iron smelters or Milling just what I know here we're learning more about the ghost towns the gold mining and silver but iron not so much here cows in the background as well you see right over there there's how far the Kiln is from where this operation would have been where they started molding the iron now this is the molding pattern house is what it says and this is All That Remains of what has been referred to as the pattern house or molding house the pattern house was a place where pig iron uh smelted in the large furnaces and it was refined in the puddle furnace or forged hammered and worked into usable items and or cast into objects for use most of the stones that were originally used to construct this building were removed decades ago uh later by people wanting to build stone for their private homes or use so this area a lot of the stones were carried out uh so people could use them to build I mean imagine when the operation quit they grabbed those resources a lot of miny towns that we've been to uh you know like uh gosh Frisco some other ones they literally stripped them uh due to war efforts they took all of the metal out they took all the wood because resources were tough and placed them in other towns for use so they were very resourceful about recycling what they could now this is interesting this is uh nice to see so they've literally put a cap on top of this to stop it from getting weather inside and they put some rod iron fence or whatever you want to call it around here to protect this because this was getting damaged still has the old piece of wood on there but that wasn't there was no screen and there was no cap on top of it to stop the weather it looks like they reinforc the base with a foundation as well good to see but this is the puddling furnace and this chimney is All That Remains of what may have been the puddling furnace it was used to refine iron as we had said in the other one which had been produced in the blast furnaces thick brick furnaces originally located inside a walled building which also would have housed a sand bedded floor or sand bedding floor pretty good siiz chimney they have really reworked that and repurposed it that's good to see but that Foundation I believe that was not here last time we were here here's the Old Forge Hood right here and this Hood was installed over a forge that was most likely located inside the molding house which was located behind us uh that's the one we were looking at the big one and the function of the hood was the funnel and remove smoke that created part of the forging process so all the smoke from that forging process went through this Hood walk over here I I thought that the uh grinding area where they used use a a donkey and you know a big piece of wood and a wheel to grind some of the substances they used uh in the Milling process but I think it's way over here by the pond and there's a pond actually this direction so take a look and see if we can find that okay so here's a a pile of slag so iron ore in its natural state contains impurities calcium magnesium aluminum uh during the smelting the ore and the fluxing agent Limestone are subject to high temperatures causing iron and its impurities uh now called slag to separate so this is where they dumped all the slag right here yeah here it is so this is the uh the Spanish uh-oh arastra Spanish Ross it was used to grind the molding sand a horse was hitched on the sweep and there it is so that arm would be the sweep and the horse would be hooked there and would run around in a circle or walk around in a circle I guess probably had a a stick with a carrot on it to make it walk and it would grind the sand right there you see that stick goes in the ground or big pole and the Iron's still there attached to it so this is the original spot where they uh they did that and there's right there you can see reads and that's where the water kind of runs through here and there's a pond over that direction where it gets Greener so this is interesting this uh Big Stone salamanders so the four dark rock-like objects are called salamanders also known as a bear or a dead man's foot in the iron production trade they are composed of all the elements placed in the blast furnace for iron smelting iron ore charcoal the fuel and a limestone the flux to remove its impurities and salamanders from the bottom of the furnace and must be removed to maintain good quality production all right so that's kind of the uh the area for the I guess the smelting process the or making process now we're going to go there's a trail that goes quite a ways back here where I believe there's a couple of old home foundations and still uh some of the Timbers the roof Timbers and things are there let's go explore that and see how they lived and how far away from the furnaces it was you know the the trail here the way this is taken care of it just gets better and better every time we're here so I've been here a couple times we've only filmed it once this will be the second time we filmed it but look at that beautiful old furnace and again they're really uh improving this location and taking care of it the parking lot area and everything if you had a RV or if you were coming up here to see this if you look up old iron town and figure out how to get here definitely a place in the parking lot to be able to park and turn around uh and again they paved it now and the bathrooms are great in a picnic area area bathrooms are really that close right over there so if you're ever on the road and come this direction it is something to see this is Discovery Trail so along this Trail on this piece of property down this Trail you're going to find the old foundations for the homes will be back this direction we came through here one time a few years ago and there was so much water it was kind of the end of winter that the Trail was washed out and the mud was about 3 in thick and super soupy and pulling our shoes off our feet Good Times old iron Town's pretty close to uh Cedar City Utah and one of the things you know Cedar City they call it Cedar City but there's no Cedars there these pinion Pines and so I don't really understand the name Cedar City other than maybe they thought that they were living in Cedars but uh these pinions are all over the place but you'll still find that even though Fields like you're shaded and kind of in a a wooded area they don't get very tall maybe 20 ft or so but right around all these pinions you're going to find a lot of rock and stone in here it's really beautiful but there's a lot of cactus too so you got that high desert feel for sure so this uh part of the trail when you go to the back it's pretty easy to navigate but at the same time I want to show it because if people I just tripped if people uh come up here you got to know there's a little bit of elevation to the rocks and so it's not for everybody but I'd say most people should be able to navigate and get through here but a lot of large Rock in the back section to get to these old foundations I don't know if we'll see them this time but last time we were here there was a a lot of wild turkey and they were making all kind of noise and walking around up here so they were in this area so maybe just maybe we'll see some wild turkey not sure a different time of the year a little bit hotter so Pinto Creek runs right down here you can barely hear it running off in the distance but that is the main reason uh for the Iron Works and why it was established here is for the Water Source uh Pinto Creek provided the stream of water necessary to turn the water wheel that pumped the Bellows for the furnace and I'll tell you walk in here one of the things is that this place is full of every type ant you can see I mean every kind of ant big ants little ants red ants black ants they're everywhere all right this is it one of the houses and what's left of one of the houses you can see the finished style walls inside like a piece of iron from the house right there maybe that's part of the wood stove or something or fireplace there it is right over there this was a good size U home it looked like there's big pieces of wood as part of the foundation on the bottom this was a private residence who lived here is unknown uh the type of building rock for this house is conveniently found in an abundance of a nearby Hill some of the original Timber used for the floors are still visible uh the nearby Creek and its distance away from the Iron Works provided an ideal location for this home if you notice the plasters on part of the wall indicating all the walls may have been plastered and finished in this home and they stabilized this house back in 2022 but it's still very fragile so last time we were here they did not have this fence here I'm glad they put it in you could still get in there if you wanted to but this is going to keep most people out that have good intentions it just stops you from walking in there and bumping around that rock and if you get enough people walking in there next thing you know it deteriorates the foundation and the walls that are still left I'm glad they did it all right so with the old home Foundation behind us here some of the walls still standing that's going to do it for Old Iron Town or Iron City as it once was called and until the next adventure goodbye from weekend escapades and we'll see you in the next one I hope that noise didn't come out of that rabbit