Smelting Pot

This exhibit examines the rise of metalworking industries in Kalamazoo and their basis in the rich bog iron resources in the banks of the Kalamazoo River. Bog iron is found along rivers and in marshy, swampy lands. Lying in layers or in clumps near the surface, bog iron was an easily accessible resource for the manufacture of metal goods in early America. As early as 1840, C.C. Douglas, Michigan’s Assistant State Geologist, reported the extensive bed of bog iron along the Kalamazoo River stretching north from East Michigan Avenue, but Douglas wasn’t the first to notice the bog iron. A British account from 1772 identifies the Kalamazoo River as the Pusawpaca Sippy, which meant “Iron Mine River.”

In the late 1840s, Ezra Wilder, Jr., an iron worker from New York, built an iron foundry near the current intersection of Riverview Drive and Mount Olivet. Unfortunately, Wilder lacked sufficient capital to both complete his project and pay for operating costs. He was forced to sell, but two prominent investors, Jeremiah P. Woodbury and Allen Potter, bought the foundry. They reopened it in 1850, and within five years, it was the largest bog iron works in Michigan. Five years later, Woodbury and Potter sold it to William M Burtt. Burtt operated the iron foundry until 1867. By then, the richest iron deposits had been exhausted, but bog iron would continue to be taken from the river until the first decades of the 20th century. The growth of metalworking in Kalamazoo, which pre-dated the paper industry, played a key role in the village transition from an agricultural-based economy to a manufacturing economy.

To read more, visit: 

https://kalamazoomuseum.org/images/museon/2011-Summer-MuseON.pdf