Tennessee's iron industry was strategically important to both North and South. Numerous furnaces supplied iron to foundries to manufacture munitions as well as armor for ironclad vessels. The fall of Forts Henry and Donelson in February 1862 opened the Tennessee River to Union gunboats. That month, one such flotilla (USS Conestoga, Tyler, and Lexington) shelled this ironworks, where the ironmaster's house, office, company store, workers' houses, barns, smokehouse, and other buildings surrounded the furnace. At least 100 people, black and white, worked here.
