Eagle Iron Works and Curtin Village is a historic site near Milesburg that preserves the story of iron making in Centre County.
Roland Curtin and Moses Boggs built Eagle Forge along the Bald Eagle Creek in 1810. They added Eagle Furnace in 1818, a rolling mill near Eagle Furnace, and Pleasant Furnace in 1848.
The smelting and forging facilities were powered by water wheels. The fires that melted iron ore into liquid iron were fueled by charcoal, and they were blasted with air streams to increase their intensity. Because it used unheated air, Eagle Iron Works was known as a “cold blast” operation.
At the time, iron makers preferred the unheated air, thinking that it contained less moisture and made better iron. Most of the industry subsequently moved to heated air – producing a “hot blast” – to save fuel and speed up the smelting process.
After Curtin bought Boggs’ share of the enterprise in 1815, the Curtin family operated Eagle Iron Works for the next 107 years. Curtin purchased property just upstream from Eagle Forge and built a workers’ village of single-family cabins arranged around an oblong village green. In 1831, he built a Federal-style ironmaster’s mansion for his large family.
It became easier to transport raw materials and products in and out of Eagle Iron Works in 1848 when the Bald Eagle and Spring Creek Navigation Company completed a 25-mile-long canal from Clinton County to Centre County. Passing between Eagle Forge and newly constructed Pleasant Furnace, the canal was a commercial lifeline until it was abandoned after a flood in March 1865.
By that time the Bald Eagle Valley Railroad was completed to Curtin Village and a station built to load iron onto trains. Nearby, the family built a two-story store, the Eagle Emporium that included the “Roland” post office named for the Eagle Iron Works founder.
However, the iron industry increasingly was shifting to cheaper coal to power furnaces, and by the end of the 1800s the charcoal-iron industry was in its final days. During World War I, there was a brief boom for iron, but in 1921 a fire destroyed the furnace’s wooden infrastructure. When the Curtins closed Eagle Iron Works in 1922, it was believed to be the longest-lived cold-blast charcoal iron works in Pennsylvania and among the last anywhere in the country.
The Curtin family continued to own the property that included the mansion, as well as the furnace stack, grist mill ruins, and some homes in the workers’ village. When the family moved out of the mansion, the property sat vacant for many years.
In the early 1960s the Army Corps of Engineers planned a dam on Bald Eagle Creek that would have flooded Eagle Iron Works. Local citizens and state-level historical authorities persuaded the corps to move the dam farther downstream and spare the site from destruction.
Soon afterward, the Curtin family donated the property to the Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Commission (PHMC) for operation as a museum. Beginning in 1968, the PHMC oversaw the restoration of the site’s surviving buildings. Supporters of the project organized the Roland Curtin Foundation to maintain the property and give tours.
Eagle Iron Works and Curtin Village was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. Then in the early 1980s, state budget cuts forced the PHMC to consider transferring many historic sites out of state ownership. At the time, the state owned and managed more than fifty properties.
In 2019, the PHMC announced that it would seek new owners for Eagle Iron Works and Curtin Village. This led to the transfer of the property to the Curtin Foundation in December 2025. The foundation had initially found the prospect of owning, maintaining, and operating the site to be daunting, but reconsidered when it learned that it could apply for state and local grants previously unavailable
In addition to offering tours of the mansion, furnace, and grounds, the Curtin Foundation hosts various events each year, including Heritage Days, Apple Fest, and Christmas at Curtin. It also works with the Bellefonte Historical Railroad Society to offer train rides to the site.
Ford Risley & Phil Ruth
Sources:
Curtin Village and Eagle Iron Works, National Register of Historic Places, 1971.
Eagle Iron Works and Curtin Village, www.curtinvillage.com (Accessed July 13, 2026).
Eggert, Gerald G. Making Iron on the Bald Eagle: Roland Curtin’s Ironworks and Workers’ Community. University Park: Penn State Press, 2000.
McWilliams, Cecile. “Historic Centre County site ‘coming back to the community,’” Centre Daily Times, June 25, 2026.
First Published: August 12, 2026