Like triumphantly raised arms, two silver smokestacks proclaim their victory over time, which otherwise seems suspended by the sprawling, wooden, red-painted shop complex surrounding it, modified by not a single nail since it first rose from the ground. A cobweb of tracks, embedded in the artery which divides the twin boroughs of Rockhill Furnace and Orbisonia, merges into three in front of the Roof Replacement depot, which bears the latter's name, the departure point for one of three daily, narrow-gauge, steam locomotive-pulled trains operating as the East Broad Top Railroad. The clang of a bell, rung across the street, indicates the arrival of a bright red trolley car from the opposite direction.
Tourists ride the rails today; coal miners rode them yesterday.
Cradled by Backlog Mountain and both Saddleback and Sandy Ridges, the area, then undeveloped, beckoned prospectors with its natural resources, consisting of agricultural land, water, timber, coal, and iron, the Backlog Creek both feeding and leading them to what would become its twin boroughs.
Initially serving as a Native American campsite and hunting ground, as evidenced by archeological traces found at Sandy Ridge, the area first took root in 1754 when the land was purchased from Six Nations, and the first road, mimicking the original Indian path and fostering westward expansion of settlers, was created 33 years later, stretching between Burnt Cabins in the south and Huntingdon in the north.
Bedford Furnace, the area's first village, evolved from a trading post in 1760. Providing both a sense of location and permanence, it attracted the first white settler, George Erwin, who established a trading post in a log cabin, shipping goods over narrow, wilderness-tunneling trails and exchanging them with travelers and Native Americans alike.
Placing the initial pin into the map, the Bedford Furnace Company established a charcoal furnace in order to be able to produce iron in 1785, sparking growth in the Juniata Valley and serving as the first of many to eventually characterize it.
Rockhill Furnace Number 1, built in 1831 by Thomas Diven and William Morrison south of the town in Backlog Narrows, replaced the smaller, original plant, while Winchester Furnace, the third such ironworks, rose a few hundred yards away.
Abandoned in 1850 after a less-than-prosperous reign, it was joined seven years later by furnace Number 1 when area deforestation depleted the timber necessary for iron smelting charcoal, although the Civil War once again-albeit temporarily-re-lit its fires.
A mortgage foreclosure preceded its purchase in 1867, but its resurrection now hinged upon a fuel source to feed it. The needed pot of gold at the end of the rainbow-or, in this case, on top of the rainbow-came in the form of coal discovered on Broad Top Mountain. What was now required was a method to transport it from its summit-located mines to the iron furnaces in the east.
