Leetonia Bee Hive Coke Ovens Park 04 : 無料・フリー素材/写真
Leetonia Bee Hive Coke Ovens Park 04 / Tim Evanson
| ライセンス | クリエイティブ・コモンズ 表示-継承 2.1 |
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| 説明 | The Leetonia Beehive Coke Ovens in Leetonia, Ohio.This is the second-largest coke oven facility still remaining in the United States.Coal and iron ore were right under the surface of Columbiana County. Iron foundries were erected in the town of Salem in the 1830s, and there had long been talk of building large iron smelters. The Ohio & Pennsylvania Railroad came through the county in 1851, and in 1862 the Niles & New Lisbon Railroad was completed.The Niles & New Lisbon attracted the interest of investors from outside Ohio, particularly Jacob G. Chamberlain of New Hampshire. Chamberlain had helped organize several railroads in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and knew that capital-poor Ohio had little means of developing the industrial capacity which would make the railroads rich.Among the many people Chamberlain talked to about investing in Ohio was William Lee, an Irish immigrant living in Randolph, New York, who had already invested in iron and coal mines in Pennsylvania.With Lee putting in the lion's share of money, Chamberlain got local men Milton Sutliff of Warren, William Matthews of New Lisbon, and Lemuel Wick of Cleveland to put in additional funds and be the Ohio incorporators.They founded the Leetonia Iron & Coal Company in 1865. A hamlet, named after Lee, was also laid out. The firm bought 200 acres of land, and leased the mineral rights under most of the farms in the area. In the winter of 1866-1867, a blast furnace and coking ovens were built. Another 400 acres of land were purchased, and in 1869 a second blast furnace and a rolling mill were built.Leetonia had grown from a single farmhouse in 1865 to an incorporated village of 1,800 in 1870.The recession of 1869-1870 forced the company into receivership, and the Cherry Valley Iron & Coal Company organized to buy up the firm. The firm prospered again, but the Panic of 1873 and the subsequent Long Depression (which did not end until 1879) caused the company to cease operations in 1879.The company restarted operations in 1900, and later that year Pittsburgh steel barons bought up all the shares and renamed the company the Cherry Valley Iron. The company finally closed for good in 1930 after the start of the Great Depression.Coke is essential to the production of high-quality iron. Coke is made from coal. Coal contains a large number of impurities, some of which can be removed by hand. But organic substances, water, tar, sulphur, ammonia, and other volatiles still remain.The Chinese discovered in the fourth century AD that if coal was baked at 1,800–2,000 °F in such a way that air was unable to get to the coal, these impurities could be driven off. The result was a grey, porous, low-ash fuel which produced high heat and little smoke.In the late 1500s, coking was independently discovered in England. Coking originally meant piling up coal in a heap, then layering on wood coals and coal dust. This "hearth" process was lengthy, taking a week or more, and the fire could not be allowed to go out. Tenders had to remain awake to ensure that the fire was fed. It was a dirty, smelly, horrible job that filled the lungs with grit and killed people young.In the mid-1700s, British experimenters developed the beehive oven. A hole at the top permitted coal to be loaded into the oven. Once an even layer of coal 2 to 3 feet deep was ready, it was ignited. The upper surface began to burn. Below the surface, the temperature reached 1,800 °F and impurities began to boil off. Once this happened, the oven roof and side-door were closed. The impurities continued to burn, keeping the heat inside the oven high. But without oxygen, the coal did not burn. The exhaust gases were allowed to escape through holes placed low in the side of the oven.A beehive oven could turn a ton and a half of coal into coke in just 48 hours. Whereas the hearth process burned two-thirds of the coal, leaving one-third as coke, the beehive oven left behind two-thirds coke.The beehive coke oven was first used in the United States about 1817 in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. Batteries of coke ovens were built near large foundries. There were 90 at Minersville, Pa.; 200 at Redstone, Colo.; 268 at Dunlap, Tenn.; 300 at Cokedale, Colo.; and a whopping 475 at Walston, Pa. (the largest coking battery in the world). By 1910, nearly 48,000 coke ovens existed in the U.S.Coking was environmentally noxious. Smoke from burning organic matter, tar, and sulphur belched from the oven chimneys. An enormous amount of ammonia gas was also released. Coking batteries consumed an immense amount of water, and the water left the ovens full of cyanide, acid, and other pollutants. The slag left over from the burned coal and physical impurities was simply shoved into immense piles. These slag heaps were super-hot, and even after a century could still emit steam on a cold day.Vegetation for miles around beehive ovens withered and died. The skies around a battery were filled with smoke. At night, the light from the fires reflected off the low-hanging clouds of smoke, lighting up the surrounding are in a kind of eerie false dawn.Beehive coking ovens continued to be used into the late 1940s, but were largely replaced by industrial coking furnaces. Scientists discovered that slag had a great many uses, and it was no longer discarded. The non-volatile gases given off by coked coal were often reclaimed, liquified, purified, and sold.Most beehive coke oven batteries were abandoned in place. Some were eventually bulldozed, while others were partially or completely dismantled for their brick.The Leetonia coke ovens were forgotten for half a century. Nature reclaimed the area.About 1980, a group of local Leetonians began to clean up the site, removing rubble, trash, disused machinery, and vegetation. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1993.Only the battery at Connellsville, Pa., has more standing beehive coke ovens. |
| 撮影日 | 2022-11-07 13:45:24 |
| 撮影者 | Tim Evanson , Cleveland Heights, Ohio, USA |
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| カメラ | NIKON D7100 , NIKON CORPORATION |
| 露出 | 0.004 sec (1/250) |
| 開放F値 | f/4.5 |
| 焦点距離 | 18 mm |