Hopewell Furnace Commemorates National Park Week With Civilian Conservation Corps Encampment

From Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site

Hopewell Furnace invites you to join us for National Park Week to commemorate the contributions of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). On Saturday, April 26, the park will conduct Ranger-led tours, and CCC reenactors will occupy a CCC encampment. All programming is free to the public and will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Park Rangers will conduct two 45-minute guided tours: one at 11 a.m. and the other at 2 p.m. The tours will explore the various places around the site where the CCC worked and that they temporarily called home. Reenactors in CCC attire will offer additional programs and demonstrations throughout the day, which highlight the role the CCC played in restoring Hopewell Furnace, as well as the organization’s impact on the entire country during the Great Depression. Activities will include mock CCC enlistment procedures, as well as cooking, woodcutting, and branding demonstrations. You can experience one of the historic tenant houses, which will be converted into a makeshift barracks.

Hopewell Furnace was established as a National Historic Site on Aug. 3, 1938. The National Park Service site preserves the late 18th and early 19th century setting of an iron-making community, including the charcoal-fueled furnace and its natural and cultural resources. This community illustrates the essential role of industrialization in the growth of the early United States. The furnace was established by Ironmaster Mark Bird in 1771. It operated as a furnace for the next 112 years. The CCC’s presence through the second half of the 1930s marked the beginning of restoration and public visitation to Hopewell Furnace.

The park is open five days a week, Wednesday through Sunday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Hopewell Furnace is located at 2 Mark Bird Ln., Elverson, about five miles south of Birdsboro, off Route 345. Admission to the park is free. For more information, call 610-582-8773 or visit the park’s website at www.nps.gov/hofu.

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Source: bctv