Cooper Furance
This huge
stone structure is on the side of the Etowah River, just below the Allatoona
Dam. Back in my teenage years I climbed that
thing. It has protruding rocks and
stones so it was fairly easily to scale like a roach might, although it did
take my breath away. I think two of us
did it. After we reached the top we
realized that we also had to climb down, which seemed it might be harder. But, we took it slowly and made it without
losing our grips or foot hold.
What I
didn't realize until recently, that the big stone thing is the only remaining
ruin of what was a complex iron and mill works owned by Mark Anthony Cooper
(1800 - 1885). The Cooper - Stroup manufacturing
complex had hundreds of men working.
Now, the rest of the complex is under the waters of the Etowah River and
Allatoona Lake.
I just read
an article about Mark Anthony Cooper in the book A NORTH GEORGIA JOURNAL OF
HISTORY, Volume 1. article THE STORY OF
A COMMUNITY ONCED CALLED ETOWAH by Robert Scott Davis, Jr.
Mr. Cooper
was a very enterprising man, he owned many companies, bought companies,
improved them and sold them. He owned
several railway companies and one of his companies, the article said, built one
of the locomotives involved in THE GREAT LOCOMOTIVE CHASE. Unfortunately, it didn't say if it was THE
GENERAL or THE TEXAS.
Cooper made
a lot of money and seemed to have lost all his money in one swoop but actually
it was because of a series of unrelated things that went wrong.
Broke, he
spent his remaining days in Murray County, Georgia.
Mark Anthony Cooper
No comments:
Post a Comment