Cooper’s Furnace

The furnace was built in the 1830s by a man named Stroup, and was the first iron smelting structure to be constructed in the area.

It was purchased by Mark Cooper, a politician, not long after he lost the 1843 race for Georgia governor. Cooper went on to construct a small industrial complex at the site of the furnace; a nail factory, a flour mill, and even a rolling mill, completed in the 1850s.

Because iron was a material of strategic and military importance, Sherman’s troops destroyed the town of Etowah in May of 1864 - but the old furnace still stands tall.