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Remains of dam and slag dump at the Buckhorn furnace. Iron Mining in Upper Cape Fear 3 — The Bias! Furnaee at Kuckliorn By MALCOLM FOWL Lit EVER since Tubal Cain, that cunning worker in metals, pounded out the first implement of iron, that metal has been one of the world’s most sought after. What if man did promptly utilize it for making a more efficient weapon for slitting an enemy’s pdlel? He could also use it for building a finer house or a sturdier ship. A superior knowledge of metal¬ lurgy has often been the deciding factor in a nation’s rise and fall. The Philistines knew that 3.000 years ago when the prophet Samuel wrote: “Now there was no smith found throughout all the land of Israel: For the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make them swords and spears." Thus it is not surprising to find furnaces for making iron scattered all over the world — even in Buckhorn in the northern pari of Harnett County. where a finger of Chatham juts down between Leo and Wake to Buckhorn was wild, hilly country back in 1855 when John Colville and his tall foreman, Jim Henry, came there seeking a site for a blast furnace to convert its rich ores into merchant¬ able pig iron. Only a few pioneer families of whites were there, along with the remnants of a tribe of Sapona Indians. It is wild, hilly country today and, if anything, still more sparsely set¬ tled. The Saponas are gone now — probably they cursed John Colville when they left for disturbing their old order of living, but the tools and weapons made from his iron which they carried away with them just as probably helped them attain a higher standard of living. As evidence of their stay they left behind them a few burial mounds and a name for John Colville’s blast furnace. “Oek-Nock,” they called it, roughly meaning, “iron pot." Many of the white families left too after Buckhorn's <lav of glory when red hot iron flowed from Colville’s log pen furnace, and, later, from the tall, iron stack built by the Cape Fear Iron and Steel Co. Down below where boisterous Buck¬ horn Creek comes brawling from Chatham’s red hills and into the CajH? Fear River. John Colville found his furnace location. Hard by a 50-foot- high hill if was, and a long mile be¬ low the creek. True, it was also a good two miles above the ore beds, but already the foreign workmen of the Cape Fear and Deep River Navigation Co. had thrown a dam across the Cape Fear at James Battle's plantation, and soon the steamboats would come threshing along to solve Colville’s one remaining problem of transportation. Foreign Workmen Irish and Hungarian, were those lock and dam workers, with a sprin¬ kling of Slovaks and Germans. Back in their home lands they had listened to glowing stories of a Carolina para¬ dise: “Where the climate was so balmy, two crops a year could be raised and the land so rich, green trees burned like giant torches!" Of course the emigrants soon found the green trees that burned so brightly were merely pines that were boxed for tur]>entine, and some of the land so poor you couldn't raise rabbits on it. But they were broke for the most part when they lauded at Wilmington and they took tint first jobs at hand- which Impelled to be on the Cape Fear locks and dams. Incidentally, descendants of some of those workers still live in the Cape Fear Valley. But back to the furnace: When Colville had decided on his location he put Jim Henry to building a squat looking monstrosity of stone, mortar and fire brick, held in place by a pen of notched-end logs on the style of a log cabin. Himself, he took a gang of workmen and dug a narrow canal from Buckhorn Creek on down by the furnace to Parker’s Creek. Put Creek to Work Then copying a trick Hercules made use of in cleaning the Aegean stables, he diverted Buckhorn Creek into his canal, and with shovel men stationed at strategic points, lie let the creek dig out and carry away thousands of cubic yards of earth — until the canal was wide and deep enough to handle his ore lighters. That finished, he put a dam across his canal and installed a turbine water wheel to drive the blowing engines. Ore was brought down from the ore hill by a double track cable tramway, the loaded car pulling the empty one back up. At the river it was dumped to