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FORT PAYNE FURNACE Fort Payne, DeKalb County Sept. 3, 1890 OF the many boom towns of the 1880's, Fort Payne is the best remembered . The Fort Payne Land and Improvement Co. purchased in 1886-7 some 36,000 acres in Wills Valley, DeKalb County. Fifty thousand shares of stock with a par value of $100 per share were issued. This stock was sold all over the country and the boom was en. On April 27, 1889 the Fort Payne Furnace Co. was organized with a capital of $200,000. It is said that every New England governor then in office held stock either in this project or the nearby Bay State Furnace Co. A prospectus of Fort Payne, published about 1890-91, contains the following statement: "At the Fort Payne Furnace an extensive body of rich brown ore is operated within 1,000 feet of the stock house, and the ore is dropped by means of a tramway into the stock house. This vein has been opened along the hillside for 1,500 feet. The red ore, soft and hard fossiliferous, abounds on the opposite side of the same ridge, and is carried to the furnaces at a minimum of cost. These veins of ore have been traced for miles, and contain sufficient quantities to last for generations." The furnace was put into blast Sept. 3, 1890, the stack being 65' x 14'. It was soon discovered that the coal from the company property, (coked at the furnace in a battery of beehive ovens) did not coke satisfactorily. That circumstance and the low grade of the ores caused the furnace to operate at a loss, so that it was blown out sometime late in 1891. In 1893 the company went into the hands of a receiver and came under the control of the DeKalb Furnace Company which did not attempt to operate the plant. In 1895 the Bessemer Land and Improvement Co., with H. F. DeBardeleben as president, acquired both the Fort Payne and the Bay State Furnace at Fort Payne. DeBardeleben considered putting the Fort Payne into blast or moving it to Bessemer but this plan was abandoned and the furnace sold to a North Carolina company which dismantled it for scrap between 1898 and 1900. _.O~~ 70 ...

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