By Gregory DL Morris

Two hundred years ago , the industrial age in the United States got off to an early start along a brook in a ravine tumbling into the Hudson River opposite the Military Academy at West Point , New York . The West Point Foundry ( WPF ), actually in Cold Spring , grew to be a major manufacturing complex , vertically integrated from raw materials to finished goods , the likes of which would not become common in North American heavy manufacturing for decades .

Very little is left today on the site of the once-mighty WPF , but that which remains has been conscientiously preserved by a coalition led by the Scenic Hudson Land Trust . And while the WPF site makes for a charming and informative day trip by train from New York City , its wider legacy comprises a historical diaspora :

• WPF made the first locomotive manufactured in the United States , the Best Friend of Charleston , in 1831 , as well as many other early locomotives .

• Both combatants in the epochal Battle of Hampton Roads during the American Civil War , the first-ever clash of ironclads , used WPF manufactured materials . The company made the engines for the steam frigate USS Merrimack that was rebuilt by the Confederacy as the CSS Virginia . WPF also made the XI-inch Dahlgren guns in the turret of the revolutionary USS Monitor . ( Roman numerals are used to designate smoothbore naval artillery ; rifled guns are designated in Arabic numerals .)

• WPF made many of the building fronts in New York City ’ s historic Cast Iron District .

• WPF made cast-iron components for several surviving historic lighthouses , including Cape Canaveral , Florida ; and Bodie Island , Cape Hattaras , North Carolina .

Ground was broken for WPF at the ravine outside Cold Spring in 1817 ; operations began in 1818 . That was 34 years after the end of the War of Independence and just two years after the end of the War of 1812 . All of the big guns in North America had been brought by colonizers , primarily

“ The Gun Foundry ,” painted by John Ferguson Weir in 1864 , is a Romantic-style amalgam of several processes at the West Point Foundry .

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