Did you know that Ore Hill in Chatham County was an important source of iron ore for munitions during the Revolutionary War?

A NC Highway Historical Marker on Old US 421 at Mt. Vernon Springs notes the site of the Wilcox iron works. Robert Hendricks and Chadburn Spivey provided  photos of the smelter. Randy Whitt, who visited the site in the 70s notes that there are still pick marks in the walls where candles were placed. Please respect that the site is on private property and not open for visitation.

Here's some history:

Only three locations in North Carolina with substantial iron ore were discovered by early European settlers. One of these was the Deep River deposits in Chatham County. However, it was almost two-hundred years after the initial discoveries that mining and refining began.

The British Parliament passed an act in 1750 that prohibited the manufacture in the colonies of any iron product except pig iron and bar iron (i.e. no iron forged into useful implements). This was part of the effort to maintain the colonies in North America as economic dependencies unable to compete with British home industries. But, as relations between the Crown and the American colonies deteriorated, the colonial legislature encouraged the development of a colonial iron industry and, in 1775, rented the furnaces and iron forges built by John Wilcox at Ore Hill near the Deep River iron ore deposits in Chatham County in order to supply iron cannons and cannonballs for the revolutionary forces. The lack of well-trained, experienced workers greatly hindered operations and the furnace proved expensive and ineffective. Congress surrendered its interest in the works to Wilcox in 1777. The structures were heavily damaged by a storm in 1780 and were abandoned.

Just prior to the Civil War, efforts were made to build up the iron industry in North Carolina. In 1861 the Sapona Iron Company built a furnace at Ore Hill (now known as Mount Vernon Springs) on the site of John Wilcox's eighteenth-century iron works. This furnace operated throughout the war.

North Carolina’s iron industry fared poorly in the face of northern competition following the end of the Civil War. Ore Hill is recognized as a Natural Heritage Natural Area by the NC Natural Heritage Program.

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