Shade Furnace Archeological District, also known as Old Shade Furnace and Shade Forge, is a national

historic district A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal protection from c ...

located at Shade Township in

Somerset County, Pennsylvania Somerset County (Pennsylvania Dutch language, Pennsylvania German: ''Somerset Kaundi'') is a County (United States), county in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the po ...

. The district includes four contributing sites and two contributing objects. It encompasses the ruins of a countryside plantation style iron forge operation that operated from 1808 to 1858. It includes a stone

blast furnace A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally pig iron, but also others such as lead or copper. ''Blast'' refers to the combustion air being "forced" or supplied above atmospheric ...

structure, a forge site, an ore pit site, a farmstead site, and a late 19th-century coal mine complex. The area includes a number of

archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology an ...

s associated with the ruins of abandoned buildings. ''Note:'' This includes It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 2008.

References

External links

Shade Furnace, ''Our American Heritage'' website by Richard Parks
* {{National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania Historic American Engineering Record in Pennsylvania Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania Historic districts in Somerset County, Pennsylvania Archaeological sites on the National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania National Register of Historic Places in Somerset County, Pennsylvania