Fires in the Mountains: forest fires, charcoal, and lumber at Catoctin Furnace

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Retrospective: 50 Years Of Research And Changing Narratives At Catoctin Furnace, Maryland", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Recent studies of fire history and dendroecology, charcoal production, and vernacular architecture around Catoctin Furnace, correlated with new palaeobotanical analysis and analysis of company store ledgers, have provided unprecedented information about the ecological history of the industrial landscape. Despite attempts at forest management, forest fires were a frequent occurrence throughout the nineteenth century on company-owned forest land which was devoted to charcoal production, and to a lesser extent for lumber and firewood. The effects of charcoal production and forest fires over this approximately 100-year period, and the sudden end of these occurrences in the twentieth century, had a profound effect on consumption patterns in the village, furnace production, the terrain, and forest composition.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• Retrospective: 50 Years Of Research And Changing Narratives At Catoctin Furnace, Maryland

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow