Nittany Furnace, known earlier as Valentine Furnace, was a hot blast iron furnace located in Spring Township, Centre County, Pennsylvania, United States. Placed in operation in 1888 on the site of an older furnace, it was an important feature of Bellefonte economic life until it closed in 1911, no longer able to compete with more modern steel producers.
Centre Iron Company
The preliminaries to the furnace's construction began in 1885, when Valentine and Thomas, an old ironmaking firm of Bellefonte, decided to sell off its properties. These then consisted of Bellefonte Forge, on Logan Branch just south of Bellefonte, and Bellefonte Furnace, a cold blast charcoal iron furnace lying about a mile south of the town, also on Logan Branch, as well as holdings in local iron ore mines. Both plants were served by the Bellefonte, Nittany and Lemont Railroad, a subsidiary of the PRR. The ironworks and ore lands were bought on August 2, 1886, for $400,000, by the Valentine Ore Land Association, whose principals organized the Centre Iron Company to erect a new iron furnace on the site of Bellefonte Furnace, which was to be torn down. A $600,000 mortgage was immediately raised on the properties, to supply the purchase money and funds for rebuilding the furnace. The leaders of the company included Edmund Blanchard, W. M. Stewart, and B. K. Jamison, a Philadelphia banker. The plant was built in 1887, and the Nittany Valley Railroad was built to supply it with ore. It became necessary to raise additional funds, and in 1887, the Pennsylvania Railroad purchased $75,000 worth of bonds in exchange for exclusive rights to rail traffic to and from the furnace. The first load of ore was delivered by the Nittany Valley on February 28, 1888, and the furnace went into blast on March 4, 1888. The company was originally headed by Jamison, but by 1890, James B. Coryell was president and Jamison vice-president. At this time, the furnace had one 70-foot (21-meter) stack and three hot-blast stoves, with a capacity of 30,000 tons (27,200 tonnes) of iron per year. Ore was supplied from local hematite deposits, and the furnace was fuelled by Connellsville coke. In the same year, however, the failure of Jamison's bank precipitated the closure of the furnace by the sheriff on November 15, 1890. It was subsequently sold under foreclosure.
Valentine Iron Company
The Valentine Iron Company was organized by the bondholders of the Centre Iron Company to take over the furnace, and was incorporated on January 28, 1891. The president was J. Wesley Gephart, Bellefonte lawyer and industrialist, and the treasurer and manager was Robert Valentine, of the original ironmaking family. A report just prior to the charter records the permanent board of directors as James H. Campbell, of Wayne, Oliver Hazard Reighard, of Williamsport, Charles W. Wilhelm, of Reading, Daniel Rhoades, Valentine, and Gephart. (Reighard was connected with another Valentine Iron Company, later the Williamsport Iron and Nail Works.)
Gephart was not only president of the iron company (and the Nittany Valley Railroad, still an affiliate), but an active railroad promoter in another direction. He became president of the Central Railroad of Pennsylvania, which, on December 2, 1893, opened its line from Mill Hall to Bellefonte, crossing and connecting with the Nittany Valley about a mile east of Bellefonte. The new line connected with the Beech Creek Railroad, controlled by the Pennsylvania Railroad's rival, the New York Central Railroad.
At the beginning of this year, the iron furnace had "re-opened", presumably the result of an upswing in the depressed iron market as the rival Bellefonte Furnace did the same. With the construction of the new railroad, the furnace's traffic was rapidly diverted over that line, prompting a lawsuit from the Pennsylvania Railroad to enforce the contract made with the Centre Iron Company. While a lower court initially held the contract not to be binding on Valentine Iron, the ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in 1895, and the furnace was forced to remove its traffic from the Central Railroad of Pennsylvania. Due to this serious setback, Gephart was compelled to step down as president of Valentine Iron and the Nittany Valley, and thereafter devoted himself to the management of the Central Railroad. He was replaced at Valentine Iron by John P. Harris, and by Mortimer O'Donoghue at the Nittany Valley. O'Donoghue also became superintendent of Valentine Iron the next year.