Nash Iron Works

Duane's take

The way the marker tells it, here's the story of the Nash Iron Works — and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, most folks driving through Marion County today wouldn't guess they're passing by the site of the first iron furnace in all of Texas. But there it is.

And the man behind it was Jefferson S. Nash, who showed up in this part of East Texas in 1846 and apparently liked what he saw. What he saw, specifically, was iron ore.

Plenty of it. He also found wood enough to burn down into charcoal, and clay suitable for making molds. Now, if you're building an iron furnace, that's about as good a starting hand as the land can deal you.

Here's how the operation worked, and it's a little more dramatic than you might expect from a hillside in East Texas. From the ridge running behind the furnace, workers poured charcoal and ore down the smokestack. Let that image sit with you for a moment — ore and charcoal cascading down into that heat.

Under the furnace grate, the iron melted and collected in a puddle, and from there it was poured into molds. Those molds shaped farm tools, cooking pots, smoothing irons — the everyday stuff of frontier life. Then the Civil War came, and the puddle of iron started producing something else entirely: cannon balls.

And possibly guns. That word — possibly — is doing real work there. The marker leaves it open, and I'll leave it open too.

But the image of that furnace, once hammering out smoothing irons, now casting cannon balls, says something about what war asks of a place. Now, Nash didn't have an easy run of it. The marker is plain about that.

He had difficulty securing machinery. Difficulty finding workers. Difficulty raising capital.

Difficulty with transportation. That's four separate mountains to climb, and he was climbing them all at once in the middle of the nineteenth century in East Texas. Whatever else you say about Jefferson S.

Nash, the man was not short on persistence. And he wasn't alone in the broader region, either. By the eighteen hundreds, at least sixteen iron works were operating across East Texas.

Sixteen. This corner of the state had a whole iron industry most people have forgotten about entirely. But Nash's was the first.

Built by a man who arrived in 1846, read the land right, and turned a ridge and a furnace and a puddle of melted iron into something Texas had never seen before.

What the marker says

First iron furnace in Texas. Built by Jefferson S. Nash, who came here in 1846. He found much iron ore, wood for charcoal, and clay to make molds. From ridge back of the furnace, charcoal and ore were poured down the smokestack. Under the furnace grate, melted iron collected in a puddle, to be put into molds for shaping farm tools, cooking pots, smoothing irons, and-- in the Civil War-- cannon balls and possibly guns. Nash had difficulty securing machinery, workers, capital, and transportation. In the 1800s, at least 16 iron works operated in East Texas.