OT-What I Saw Today West/Middle Tn

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Mar 25, 2012

I went down to Dan's house in Sardis Tn. Friday and we went to a local chicken sale at the sale barn in Scotts Hill Tn. Satrday morning. Poultry sales are becoming popular in rural Tennessee lately. This first photo is of the livestock entrance to the sale barn, where the sellers would bring their poultry cages in to be tagged and lined up for the sale later at 10:00 AM

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Mar 25, 2012

Property values are high along the bank of the Tennessee river. These homes are lined up along the river bank across from Martin island. Notice that all the homes are on stilts. When the river floods, it sometimes gets up over the nice green yards.

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Mar 25, 2012

South end of Martin island. The Tennessee river flows north here, so this is the leading edge of the island. The island is or was owned by a private individual for farming. He wanted to build an airstrip on the island and got into trouble with the government over it, I am told. I wonder if General Grant passed this island when he was on his way to Shiloh at the Pittsburg landing just south of here?

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Mar 25, 2012

Another wild flower along the edge of the winding blacktop country road just west of Cedar Bluff. Notice the water droplets? It was raining off and on.

sotxbill · Mar 25, 2012

WOW!!! you must really have some big chickens if you have to put them in pens like that.

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Mar 25, 2012

Dan and I had gone up to Cedar Bluff looking for the cabin of one of my ex wife's relatives that was built on one of the limestone cliff edges. Folks have been building huts and cabins up on the cliffs for years. Her aunt and uncle had a cabin with a solid limestone patio for a back yard. They'ed built a wooden fence at the edge of it. If you jumped over the fence, you'd have a 200 ft free fall to the river below. Nowadays, those propertys are going for high dollar and local folks cannot afford to build there anymore. On the way out Dan stopped his truck and suggested I photograph some of the flowers growing right at the edge of the road.

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Mar 25, 2012

This is the front of the log cabin. You can see the board siding covering the logs. There are a lot of log homes in Tennessee that are covered with some sort of siding even today.

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Mar 25, 2012

On our way out from the furnace we spotted this old home place with some abandned farm equipment (On topic!)It was raining pretty good by this time. You can see the rain in this photo and the next.

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Mar 25, 2012

The bridge or the walkway across to the furnace. the laborers would carry the layers of charcoal and iron ore across a walkway from this point to the top of the furnace in the background and dump it in till it would be filled and fired up. The link will lead you to a better explination of how it worked and what time period. Notice the Dogwood trees blooming.

Brownsport Furnace

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Mar 25, 2012

A view across the inside of the old furnace. Notkice the wood boards on the other side.

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Mar 25, 2012

The furnace was the cause of trees being stripped from the hill sides (clear cutting) till all the wood was gone (charcoal) and it was not economically possible to run the furnace anymore because the oxcarts would have to travel so far in a day to gather wood for charcoal. In the end, tree roots are the most probable cause of the slow destruction of the furnace.

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Mar 25, 2012

To give you some idea of the size of the furnace, Dan is standing beside the furnace and this is mostly the brick lining inside the frunace with some missing off the top.

Bob Bancroft · Mar 25, 2012

Wonderful pictures, as usual. I got my first one on here a while back, but it didn't look nearly as impressive as it did live.
I hate to see the old iron rotting away. Went with a 70+ year old neighbor to look at a corn planter this AM. It is kind of a cold, gray day anyhow, but so is my mood. I didn't get a thing from my multi-generational farm homestead. Here was a complete line up setting, rusting away. The guy hasn't farmed in several years. At least most everything was under cover. Several Farmall tractors. Nice White plow. Modern NH hay equipment. TWO NI two row pickers- one with 12 roll bed, one with sheller.(8 roll bed in back corner) K2 Gleaner. etc. etc.
JD 7000 4 row cons. w/dry fert. is basically a good unit. But the discs that aren't sloppy don't turn. So it needs a lot of work. No monitor. He wants $4500. So my friend will drag out his old 494A once again.

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Mar 25, 2012

This is the jumping off point or the place where the bridge went across from the hill side to the mouth of the furnace. The link say's that a lot of slave labor was used to build and operate the furnace and all the community buildings and the ore mine next to it and to gather the wood for charcoal. The ground around the base of the furnace was a literal inferno as the molten iron ore ran out at the base in what was called a "sow" to the troughs on either side called "piggs" there fore the term "pig iron"

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Mar 25, 2012

Going around the side of the furnace, you can see wood boards that were stacked between layers of brick (two horizontal) It's a wonder that they have not completely deterriorated??
The outside of the fornace was covered with limestone blocks like what is at the base. a better example can be seen just south of "Home Place 1850" in the land between the lakes. It still has the limestone block outer covering.

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Mar 25, 2012

This is what we saw when we pulled off the road. No parking lot, no sign nothing. Just a couple of placks that can be seen on the front left side.
Notice the swirl in the cinders on the brick wall.

Zachary Hoyt · Mar 25, 2012

Nice old H there, or maybe a Super H.
Zach

MarkWV · Mar 25, 2012

very nice photos of a great place, what camera are you using, I had a nice Sony a560 with Tamron 28-75MM macro and someone decided they liked it more than I did and stole it

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Mar 25, 2012

After we left the Blooming arts festival in Linden, Dan talked me into going down to find the Brown'sport furnace south east of Decaturville Tn. The trip through the country could rival any scenic area in this country. We were looking across a large meadow valley traveling along the west side, and looked at a road traveling along the east side, parallel to the road we were on. Sure enough we were on that road a few minuites later, going the other way and around a large timbered hill. There was a spring fed stream running through the middle of it. I really wish I'd taken pictures of it. Later we looked for signs directing us to the frunace, there were none, but we noticed a road sign that said "furnace rd" so we turned around at the next safe driveway around the corner and over the hill and went back to the "Furnace rd" We'd gone down the road a mile or less and came up to a man and his family working on a project near the road in his yard. We stopped and asked if we were on the right road to the furnace. He said "Yes" and after much talking (small talk) he knew folks that Dan knew and Dan knew folks that he was related to, so on so forth ect,ect. (we were there 30 minuites and Dan finally turned the motor off while we talked) He said "Go on down the road to where it turns to gravel, then go another mile and a half, you will see black rocks in the road, you are there! If I hadn't remembered the comment about the black rocks in the road, we would have gone on by it, easily! This is one of the black rocks. It is black glass that is the byproduct of the melting of the iron ore. I guess it is an impurity that rises to the top and has to be broken out of the frunace after it has cooled enough to reload. These black rocks were everywhere!

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Mar 25, 2012

We left Scotts Hill Tn. for the Blooming Arts Festival in Linden Tn. Basically a street festival with arts and crafts lining both sides of the street, about five blocks of highway 412 running through town. Dan thought that there might be a few old tractors at the festival, but, we didn't see any. I saw a (orthadox, she was wearing the traditional plain dress with gauze cap on the back of her head and tennis shoes) Mennonite girl taking a photo of someone and thought that I should have taken a photo of her while she was taking a photo of someone else. I missed a lot of good photos like that. Anyway there were a few amusement rides and activities like this bungiee?? jumper. There was also a carnival type of sideshow trailer that had a lot of snakes (the sign said several over two hundred pounds)
It started raining as we made the far end of the festival, so we turned around and made our way back to the truck on the far end and left for Sardis by way of Parsons for a hamburger at Hardees.

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Mar 25, 2012

This is the bleachers and balcony that line the sale area of the sale barn, very steep sides where we were sitting and very uncomfortable. Dan said a bull had jumped over the high rail from the arena and climbed the bleachers and out the window up and behind us onto the roof of the office and entrance "He probably went through the roof" The sale started late and started off with fertilized eggs and laying and hatching equipment and some regular eating eggs, then went to cages of chickens geese, guineas, ducks, turkeys and rabbits. After about an hour and a half, I was ready for something else. I couldn't buy any chickens anyway.

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Mar 25, 2012

These are the birds (and rabbits) linning the sides of the alley way in the sale barn. The help would bring the cages here and line them up for the sale with tags on each cage. Several different kinds of chickens ( I only recognised the Leghorn chicken) guineas of different kinds, several ducks and baby ducks. Turkeys, geese rabbits too.
There were more animals around the corner in another alley way, and they were still coming in.

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Mar 25, 2012

I use a cheap Nikkon Coolpix L18 8 Megapixel camera. I've had it four or five years and carry it on a cheap monopod. Before that I had a HP 3.2 magapixel camera.

ShadetreeRet · Mar 25, 2012

Some very interesting photos! It is a shame that kids don't learn about such as the furnace when they are in school. At least they would have some idea of how things were done before transistors and electronic "chips" were invented.

huntingreen2day · Mar 25, 2012

Sure a picture perfect photo.

Rick Kr · Mar 25, 2012

Nice pictures. There are a few huge furnaces like that in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan doing the same thing processing pig iron.

They are something to look at. Some you can walk and crawl right up in.

Rick

jared in wi · Mar 25, 2012

I thought that this picture was really cool. Made it the back round for my desk top.

Anonymous-0 · Mar 25, 2012

Thanks for the history trip. Great photo of the single blue flower.

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Mar 26, 2012

If you'll send me a email, I'll send you the origonal full size, and it will be a lot better photo.
--Walt--

rustcollector · Mar 26, 2012

Walt,

Great photos as always. Would like a high res copy of the old barn and abandoned tractors as well. email is open. You would probably find interesting the Tannehill AL State Park southwest of Birmingham. They have a good museum history of the iron and steel industry in the Birmingham area about the same time as the furnace you saw. Have two restored furnaces, a cotton gin of the late 1800's, grist mill, blacksmith shop and a lot of crafts of yesteryear, old trucks, etc. Cabins are available for rent and a flea market every third weekend of the month. Takes a long day to go through it quickly.

641Dave · Mar 26, 2012

Fascinating post and pictures. Thanks for sharing. I think I'd be a little nervous walking around that wall of bricks.

What caused the swirl around the furnace? Just the way it was made?

I think the black glass rocks are called obsidian but I thought they were only made by volcanos. Cool!

kyplowboy · Mar 26, 2012

There's a few left about like that around Golden Pond in LBL.

Dave

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Mar 26, 2012

Dan said that he was told that night at his local town coffee shop that the area was infested with rattle snakes. The swirl is actually part of the inside of the furnace and I believe flame caused the swirl.

OT-What I Saw Today West/Middle Tn

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