I never thought that there would be something of historic significance in Saugus. I knew there was a National Historic Site there – I had seen the signs – but having experienced Route One in Saugus (a long stretch of roads with fast food restaurants, mini-golf, gas stations and tacky sculptures – Orange Dinosaurs and the Leaning Tower of Pizza), it was tough to believe anything historic could possibly be left. Given my goal of visiting all the National Parks, I knew I was going to go there eventually, and with the impending government shutdown, I thought I should go on up there while the weather was still warm. I checked out their website, and saw that they were doing an Iron Pour for an upcoming weekend. Obviously, that was the weekend to go.

Ironwork has interested me for a while. I took a blacksmithing class last year, and liked it enough that I want to do more. Unfortunately, it is hard to find beginning blacksmithing classes, so I haven’t progressed much past my Useful S-Hook. The event at the Saugus Iron works was very exciting then, because there would be sand casts available for the first 250 people. It wasn’t blacksmithing, but it involved hot, molten metal, which is even better than just hot, glowing metal.

So I drove up the to Iron Works. I got a late start due to savoring my coffee in bed and reading, so I was really nervous when the entire neighborhood was parked full. It didn’t look like I was going to be one of the first 250! People were driving up on lawns to park, and I caught a glimpse of a Bouncy Castle. I was impressed – a Bouncy Castle at a National Park! Turns out it was Founders Day in Saugus, and all the traffic and Bouncy attractions were for the Founders Day Pancake Breakfast. I should have known better – there aren’t many people who get stoked to go to a historic site early on a Saturday morning, my wife included.

When I got to the actual park, there were only a handful of people there. The rangers were having a meeting at a picnic table, and clearly I was going to be able to make something. Then I got a little bummed out because people were milling about a block or two away, having fun for sure, when they could be down at the Iron Works learning about the Founders of Saugus and making something cool. The Bouncy Castle was close enough that you could do both!

I toured the museum. The iron used here was Bog Iron. The museum signs showed drawings of people scooping up the bog iron from the bottom of the bog. The drawing made it look like it was just sitting there waiting for them to pick it up, like pennies at the bottom of the fountain. I know a bit about geology, but I had never heard of this. I had heard about bog people, but never bog iron.

Apparently bog iron deposits form when iron precipitates out of the bog water through chemical or biological oxidation. If the highly acidic environment of a bog is feed by an iron rich water source, there will be a chemical reaction and the iron will essentially form a solid out of the water solution and sink to the bottom. It is a renewable resource – as long as the environment doesn’t change. The iron will continue to precipitate out of the water, but probably not fast enough for most human industry. But the bogs around Saugus were rich enough in the iron ore (limonite, to be exact) that it could sustain industry for quite a while. The Iron Works closed due to poor business management and low profits, as opposed to the depletion of the natural resource.

After I toured the museum, the rangers started passing out the sand casts for our projects. I hadn’t known what to expect, so I hadn’t planned what I was going to make. It looked like most people were making letters. I thought about a big L or D, but didn’t really like that idea. I heard some hipsters (yes! There were hipsters here!) talking about making trivets, but I was having difficulty envisioning the reverse of what I was making. As I planned my piece, I kept reminding myself that everything was inverted, and that I was shaping the area around the iron, not creating a final piece. I started to sketch out a trivet, but decided that it would look too much like a manhole cover (which in retrospect would have been pretty cool). I tried to think of something I could draw, but had texture, and I eventually came up with a maple leaf. The dragon’s head I wanted to make was too much for my meager skills.

After we carved out our pieces, the head ranger led us on a tour of the works while we waited for the forge to heat up. She talked about the discovery and reconstruction of the Iron Works, and also the industrial process. The rangers opened up the spillways, turning the waterwheels, which powered huge bellows that got the charcoal fires up to the intense temperatures needed to melt the iron. We all got to see the gears shifting, and the bellows pumping. Pretty cool! Once the iron was melted, the slag was poured off. The iron was poured into the sand, making rough “sows” or bars. These bars were then forged into thinner, longer merchant bars and shipped throughout the Empire. The Iron Works also had a slitting mill, which took the iron merchant bars, flattened them and then split them into long square rods for making nails.

One of the 40 or so people on the tour asked about the export of the forged iron to the sugar plantations in the Caribbean, and if the Puritans had any issues with supporting slavery. Her answer was basically, “No.” During the time that the iron works was in operation (1646 – 1670), slavery was alive and well in Massachusetts. According to the Massachusetts Historical Society, , the first African slaves were brought to the colony in 1634, and slavery was officially legalized in 1641. In 1670, the last year of production at the iron works, slavery was expanded to include children of female slaves. The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that slavery violated the Commonwealth’s constitution in 1783, and in 1788, the slave trade was declared illegal. Massachusetts later became a center of abolitionism, but for those one hundred and fifty or so years, there was slavery in the colony and the state.

Our ranger also talked about the skilled workers, Non-Puritan indentured servants who were brought to the colony, and the social conflicts that resulted. The workers drank, got in fights, missed church and wore fine clothes that were legally reserved for the upper classes. They were often present in court and punished for their excesses. Life as an indentured servant was not easy. They worked twelve hour days, six days a week. But due to the demand for their skills, these indentured servants were able to negotiate shorter terms of service, and become independent workers. The ranger was careful to point out that this did not make them freemen – this required church membership, among other things, and few of the iron workers attained this level of social status.

The works also used POW labor. About thirty-five Scots captured at the Battle of Dunbar, who survived the forced march from Scotland to Durham, and also survived their imprisonment there, were sold into indentured servitude, and shipped to Saugus. The Reverend John Cotton wrote at the time, that the Scots were not sold into servitude forever, but only for “6 or 7 or 8” years. Of course, they were prisoners of war, separated from their families, forcibly removed from their homeland, and sent to a place from which it must have been nearly impossible to return.

One of my ancestors, Edward Doty, came to Massachusetts on the Mayflower as an indentured servant. My understanding of indentured service is at about an elementary school level – that indentured servants were happy, but bound, apprentices, like Johnny Tremain. I hadn’t really thought that these men (and women) were selling their freedom, or being forced into servitude. They were not owned, but their labor was, and thus all aspects of their life were controlled by the owner of their contract.

After the tour, the forge was finally hot enough. I watched with some jealousy as the artisans running the iron pour put on their leather pants, shoe covers and jackets, and began loading the forge with old pieces of iron. As the forge heated, we watched the slag pour out the side, and eventually the molten iron poured out into a large container, which the workers then poured into smaller buckets on long poles. Then they poured these into the waiting small molds. I have a fascination with fire, lava, and now molten iron, so I could have watched them pour the iron all day.

The Historic Site was an unexpected gem. Like nearly every park I have been to (as an adult), my expectations were exceeded, and my perspective changed by what I learned there. The great interpretative tour and museum were only topped by the chance to make a cool iron tile to take home. All paid for with my tax dollars!