My family tried to beat the heat on a hot August Sunday with a trip down the Tooley Pond Road to check out the waterfalls. We didn’t make it past Twin Falls because it was such a beautiful and interesting spot, and it was nice and cool in the waterfalls’ floor bottom. Evidence of the area’s past abounds, and the main falls are quite impressive.
As we reached the “beach” at the bottom of the falls, we found that the rocky shore was covered with rocks that had edges of glass, in different colors. It was odd, but then we also found a rock with some coal in it, and a chunk of rusty iron ore. I concluded that the immediate area must have had a blast furnace for smelting iron – the rock would melt and fuse to an obsidian-like glass. On the way back up from the falls we took a different route and did indeed find the blast furnace. (Photo included below).
I looked it up when I got home and a google search revealed that the immediate area did have an iron-processing infrastructure to support the nearby iron-mine Town of Clarksboro, which was operation from approximately 1866 to the 1950s. Indeed, the first of the “Twin” Falls was actually created by the smelters, as they cut the channel to divert water, that was in turn used to power the bellows for the blast furnace.
Now the Twin Falls are a scenic place to stay cool on a hot summer day.