The Ohio furnace town that became a cement town, then woods

You asked about the iron-furnace towns of Lawrence County, so we looked. Every charcoal furnace had a village around it: houses, a company store, a church. On the U.S. Geological Survey map of 1898 there is Center Furnace, built in the 1830s to make charcoal pig iron, with the Iron Railroad at Center Station since 1853. In 1906 the Superior Portland Cement Company bought the furnace and 7,500 acres around it. The furnace went cold in 1909, and a cement town, Superior, grew up beside the works you can see on the 1961 map. Superior's post office closed in 1951 and its mail went to Pedro. Cement making ended in 1986. Ohio's aerial photos show the empty plant still standing in 2007, and today the main building and the row of silos are still there, with the woods closing in. So Superior wasn't flooded out: it was abandoned, then mostly leveled. A few furnace stacks still stand, like Buckhorn near Pedro and Vesuvius a few miles away.

Did your family work the furnaces or the cement plant? Tell us. Follow Cracked Buckeye for more of Ohio, then and now.

Sources:
- Center Furnace: Lawrence County Historical Society, 'Center' (built 1833-36, sources differ; charcoal pig iron)
- Iron Railroad: Lawrence County Historical Society, 'Iron Railroad' (Center Station, 1853)
- Superior: Clio, 'Superior Portland Cement Company', and LCHS, 'Marquette' (furnace and 7,500 acres bought 1906; furnace abandoned 1909; cement making ended 1986); standing structures read from OSIP aerials, 2007 and 2020
- Superior post office 1907-1951, mail to Pedro: The Lawrence Register, 'Post Offices established in Lawrence County Ohio'
- 1898: U.S. Geological Survey, Ironton quadrangle
- 1961: U.S. Geological Survey, Pedro quadrangle
- 2007: Ohio Statewide Imagery Program (OGRIP), OSIP I, flown March 2007
- Today: Ohio Statewide Imagery Program (OGRIP), flown 2020
- Photo, 1840s: Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio (first drawn 1846-47; this print from the 1888-91 edition), via Internet Archive, no known restrictions
- Photo, 1939: U.S. Forest Service, via National Archives (NARA 2128436), public domain
- Photo, 1997: Historic American Engineering Record, HAER OH-114 (Library of Congress), no known restrictions