The train runs Saturdays and Sundays 2-4pm through October and is free to hop on board. The museum and the nearby Roeliff Jansen Historical Society are open during the same weekend hours.
Are you looking for a fun – and educational – experience for both kids and adults within a half hour of Hudson? Check out the Copake Iron Works National Heritage Area Site and Historic District in nearby Copake Falls, New York. You will learn about Copake Falls’ former mining industry and take a ride in a replica iron ore cart.
Starting in 1845, the nearby ore pit, now a swimming hole at Taconic State Park, was mined and the ore transported and smelted in the furnace of the Copake Iron Works. The company denuded and burned about a thousand acres of surrounding forests in Columbia County to make charcoal to heat the furnace to over 2,000 degrees. The iron that poured from the furnace was then molded in the nearby workshop to make locomotive parts and rails for America’s expansion westward. The workshop, now a museum, is filled with tools, everyday items and ephemera left by the workers.
I owe my soul to the company store.
– Sixteen Tons
You may remember the lyric to the song, Sixteen Tons, “I owe my soul to the company store.” Years before labor unions and workers’ rights laws, hard laborers were paid in company scrip – a currency that could only be used to pay rent and buy provisions at the company store. This form of compensation kept workers indebted to the company and unable to move. The Copake Iron Works Historic Site preserves and illustrates this complex local social and industrial network from one hundred years ago.
When the iron mine was depleted in 1903, the company closed and the site was abandoned. In 1926, New York State, under the aegis of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, acquired the land and created the Taconic State Park and flooded the iron ore pit to make the current swimming hole. In 2008, Friends of Taconic State Park formed to help preserve and promote the iron works site and the surrounding eighteen acres of parkland.
The Copake Iron Works Historic Site is adjacent to the Harlem Valley Bike Trail, Taconic State Park, Bash Bish Falls, and a general store that serves ice cream. There’s a full day of activities. The Copake Iron Works State Historic Site is the perfect day trip for the entire family.
For more information, visit the Friends of Taconic State Park website.
See you at the Copake Iron Works!