New York, Putnam County, Cold Spring
![]()
You are looking at the ruins of the boring mill, one of West Point Foundry’s vital centers and among the earliest buildings in the foundry complex. A large, two-story structure, the boring mill served several functions. The first floor was used for the manufacture of various products, while the second floor housed a pattern shop, where forms and molds for the molten iron were created and stored.
A hive of activity, the boring mill was filled with geared cranes, whirring lathes and other heavy machinery driven by a massive water wheel and leather belting system. The water that powered them came from an intricate series of headraces fed by Foundry Brook. Cannons, steam boilers, church bells and industrial hardware for cotton and sugar plantations in the U.S. and Caribbean were produced here in great numbers – setting the stage for America’s emergence as a major industrial power.
Water Wheel
The boring mill’s operations were driven by the powerful, 36-foot diameter water wheel housed adjacent to the main structure. The replica you see today depicts a section of the wheel at its original scale, located exactly where it stood during the foundry’s heyday.
Battery Pond
Just to the north is a two-tiered granite stone dam that held a reservoir of water – recycled from the foundry’s blast furnace and from additional run-off – that supplemented the considerable waterpower of Foundry Brook and its upstream dam, supplying the foundry’s water wheels and turbine that provided power to the gears and machinery. There were three ponds on the site, allowing West Point Foundry to operate year-round, even during dry seasons. This sophisticated system perfectly illustrates the innovation required to recreate and operate heavy machinery in the days before electricity.
A Powerful Force
Water has profoundly impacted the West Point Foundry site. Whether flowing, soaking, drying or freezing, it has played the greatest role in destroying and obscuring the history that remains here by cracking and eroding building ruins and decomposing artifacts that await discovery. As the foundry’s network of sluices, gates and dams decayed in the century after its operations ceased, water often flowed haphazardly over much of the site. Today, the conditions that made this ravine an ideal place for a water-powered enterprise – its steep elevation, powerful brook, healthy rainfall and proximity to the river – make it a challenge to protect. In an effort to alleviate flooding, Scenic Hudson has reinforced sections of Foundry Brook’s banks and maintains the preserve’s forest critical for soaking up water.
Putnam History Musuem
To learn more about West Point Foundry and see examples of its output – from Parrott gun projectiles to cast iron furniture – visit the Putnam History Museum, which features a permanent foundry exhibition as well as archival material related to the ironworks. Founded in 1906 to collect, preserve, and present historical and cultural material pertaining to Putnam County, the foundry, and the Hudson Highlands, the museum is located at 63 Chestnut Street (stop 8 on the Red Trail) in the former schoolhouse built for foundry apprentices and employees’ children.
( Sidebar : )
Under an illustration of the mill and water wheel:
1. Pattern storage area
2. Water wheel
3. Jib crane
4. Wheel lathe
5. Parrott guns on lathe
6. Power drive belts
This illustration depicts how the boring mill complex appeared during the Civil War, when the foundry was manufacturing Parrott guns.
One of the challenges of industrial archaeology is that, in many cases, structures such as these are fluid in their layout over time, with additional rooms added and others falling into disuse, reflecting new technologies, advances in raw materials and – above all else – changing fortunes in manufacturing. Understanding how these early industrial sites functioned in their time is a complex process, combining careful excavations with research into documentary evidence – surveyors’ maps, village records, personal diaries and sketchbooks, and other primary source material. Period photographs also are valuable tools that help archaeologists make sense of the ruins that remain at West Point Foundry Preserve today.
(Industry & Commerce • War, US Civil) Includes location, directions, 13 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
You are looking at the ruins of the boring mill, one of West Point Foundry’s vital centers and among the earliest buildings in the foundry complex. A large, two-story structure, the boring mill served several functions. The first floor was used for the manufacture of various products, while the second floor housed a pattern shop, where forms and molds for the molten iron were created and stored.
A hive of activity, the boring mill was filled with geared cranes, whirring lathes and other heavy machinery driven by a massive water wheel and leather belting system. The water that powered them came from an intricate series of headraces fed by Foundry Brook. Cannons, steam boilers, church bells and industrial hardware for cotton and sugar plantations in the U.S. and Caribbean were produced here in great numbers – setting the stage for America’s emergence as a major industrial power.
Water Wheel
The boring mill’s operations were driven by the powerful, 36-foot diameter water wheel housed adjacent to the main structure. The replica you see today depicts a section of the wheel at its original scale, located exactly where it stood during the foundry’s heyday.
Battery Pond
Just to the north is a two-tiered granite stone dam that held a reservoir of water – recycled from the foundry’s blast furnace and from additional run-off – that supplemented the considerable waterpower of Foundry Brook and its upstream dam, supplying the foundry’s water wheels and turbine that provided power to the gears and machinery. There were three ponds on the site, allowing West Point Foundry to operate year-round, even during dry seasons. This sophisticated system perfectly illustrates the innovation required to recreate and operate heavy machinery in the days before electricity.
A Powerful Force
Water has profoundly impacted the West Point Foundry site. Whether flowing, soaking, drying or freezing, it has played the greatest role in destroying and obscuring the history that remains here by cracking and eroding building ruins and decomposing artifacts that await discovery. As the foundry’s network of sluices, gates and dams decayed in the century after its operations ceased, water often flowed haphazardly over much of the site. Today, the conditions that made this ravine an ideal place for a water-powered enterprise – its steep elevation, powerful brook, healthy rainfall and proximity to the river – make it a challenge to protect. In an effort to alleviate flooding, Scenic Hudson has reinforced sections of Foundry Brook’s banks and maintains the preserve’s forest critical for soaking up water.
Putnam History Musuem
To learn more about West Point Foundry and see examples of its output – from Parrott gun projectiles to cast iron furniture – visit the Putnam History Museum, which features a permanent foundry exhibition as well as archival material related to the ironworks. Founded in 1906 to collect, preserve, and present historical and cultural material pertaining to Putnam County, the foundry, and the Hudson Highlands, the museum is located at 63 Chestnut Street (stop 8 on the Red Trail) in the former schoolhouse built for foundry apprentices and employees’ children.
( Sidebar : )
Under an illustration of the mill and water wheel:
1. Pattern storage area
2. Water wheel
3. Jib crane
4. Wheel lathe
5. Parrott guns on lathe
6. Power drive belts
This illustration depicts how the boring mill complex appeared during the Civil War, when the foundry was manufacturing Parrott guns.
One of the challenges of industrial archaeology is that, in many cases, structures such as these are fluid in their layout over time, with additional rooms added and others falling into disuse, reflecting new technologies, advances in raw materials and – above all else – changing fortunes in manufacturing. Understanding how these early industrial sites functioned in their time is a complex process, combining careful excavations with research into documentary evidence – surveyors’ maps, village records, personal diaries and sketchbooks, and other primary source material. Period photographs also are valuable tools that help archaeologists make sense of the ruins that remain at West Point Foundry Preserve today.
(Industry & Commerce • War, US Civil) Includes location, directions, 13 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
West Point Foundry
On this site a blockhouse was constructed in 1794 by order of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe. He planned to establish here a small naval arsenal which would form a link in the defences of Upper Canada's western frontier and also draw the Indian trade from Detroit. The post was garrisoned by a detachment of the Queen's Rangers, and two gunboats were built; but by 1797 it was abandoned. In 1798 the province's Administrator, Peter Russell, had the blockhouse moved to Sandwich to serve as the Western District's court-house and gaol.
Killed while commanding his ship U.S.S. Arizona at Pearl Harbor T.H. December 7, 1941
On this site, Tecumseh, a Shawnee Chief, who was an ally of the British during the War of 1812, fought against American forces on October 4, 1813. Tecumseh was born in 1768 and became an important organizer of native resistance to the spread of white settlement in North America. The day after the fighting here, he was killed in the Battle of the Thames near Moraviantown. Tecumseh Park was named to commemorate his strong will and determination.
American Bison, migrating in great herds, created a cluster of paths along the natural topography between Illinois prairies and salt licks in Kentucky. These paths, called the Buffalo Trace, used by Native Americans and became premier travel route for early settlers and military. Northern and southern routes existed between New Albany and Vincennes.
The heart of the U.S. Army is its regular infantry, with lineage going back to 1808. The First Infantry Division is America’s oldest division. In 1918 the soldiers of the 1st won America’s first major battle of WWI at Cantigy. 
The Forks of the Thames are formed by the joining of the Thames River and McGregor Creek creating a peninsula that is present day Tecumseh Park in Chatham, Ontario. The strategic importance of the site was recognized by Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe when he visited the region in 1793.
On October 9, 1933, William H. Jensen, an amateur archaeologist, uncovered the badly broken skeleton of a man in a gravel pit on the plateau visible about ½ mile south of this marker. The plateau was formed as an island in the ancient River Warren, an outlet of Glacial Lake Agassiz.
In the late summer of 1862, the land on which you're standing was a war zone. The causes of that war had been brewing for decades.
