The Katahdin Iron Works is a Maine state historic site located in the unorganized township of the same name. It is the site of an ironworks which operated from 1845 to 1890. In addition to the kilns of the ironworks (of which only one survives), the community was served by a railroad and had a 100-room hotel. The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969.The state's property contains Gulf Hagas, a canyon on the West Branch of the Pleasant River that is a National Natural Landmark. About a mile and a half downriver is another national landmark, "The Hermitage", a roughly 35acre grove of large Eastern White Pine trees that is preserved by The Nature Conservancy. In 2003, the Appalachian Mountain Club acquired a 37000acre property upriver from Gulf Hagas that it named Katahdin Iron Works.Iron WorksEarly European surveyor Moses Greenleaf translated the Abnaki name Munnalammonungan for the west branch of the Pleasant River as "very fine paint." About 1820 he found Ore Mountain of orange, yellow, and red iron oxide pigments used for Abnaki paints. It was identified as a limonite gossan in 1843. Samuel Smith built a road from Brownville, Maine in 1841 and then built a company town where the West Branch of the Pleasant River flows out of Silver Lake. The town included the American Lumber Company sawmill, boarding house, cooperative store, town hall, school, post office, stables, and homes for 200 families. Stonemasons then built a 55-foot high rock blast furnace with water-powered blowers. They also built eighteen stone beehive kilns to convert wood to charcoal for producing about 2,000 tons of pig iron annually.
