Pennsylvania's Abandoned Cement Kilns | Coplay Kilns

this video is brought to you by betterhelp the Coplay cement kills are nine massive structures designed as an open air Historic Site entering service in 1893 the kils were used in the production of Portland cement the most common type of cement in the world after being shut down in 1904 they were donated to Lehigh County in 1975 for the creation of a historic site and although they are no longer in use they remain a celebration of the industry of the country and the nation as a whole without the company that built these kils there is no America industrial Juggernaut without the Coplay cement company the new world of America may have never overshadowed the old and yet next to no one knows about them so today we will uncover their hidden story and how they helped build America I'm your host Ryan soash and you're watching its history before we talk about the cement Killin we need to start with the basics so let's discuss what cement actually is cement is a binder a sort of glue that holds materials together in construction it's one of the world's most consumed resources just behind water if you want to build something you need cement it's not a recent invention either for example the earliest known development of natural cement occurred 12 million years ago and some of the earliest Productions of its components started 500 million years ago at least that's when jacksonburg limestone began forming across what we now call Pennsylvania natural cement is created by removing carbonic acid from Limestone that contains clay to do this the Limestone needs to be heated at temperatures ranging from 800 to 1200° F this can occur in nature but it's rare Roman Engineers found natural cement around Mount Vesuvius whose eruption presumably fired the Limestone at the right temperature to make cement natural cement is a soft Yellow Stone that must be grounded into powder before use however this is not the kind of cement that is most common hydraulic cement takes center stage and it has a more intricate development so we're going to go through the creation of Portland cement the most common kind of hydraulic cement first the materials namely limestone in our case are collected and crushed it's then combined with various other ingredients known as clinker minerals and then burned in a cement Kiln the Kiln takes the mixture up to 2,700 de F which turns some elements to gas and the remainder of the clinker comes out as small gray Pebbles the finely ground cement powder is the result and the clinker can later be re added to make new kinds of cement this is a much more efficient process than normal cement as the clinker can be reused multiple times and can be stored for several months however it's worth pointing out that the carbon dioxide emissions from the cement firing contribute about 10% to the world's total CO2 emissions and estimates say that that number will more than double by 2050 to meet the growing world population however there is room for improvement in the process so Solutions are in the works now that we've gone over the process of creating cement we can get into the people who made it and ultimately built the America that we know but first I'd like to tell you about a very helpful service that I recently discovered you see over the past few years quite a few people who I hold dearly sought help for their mental health seeing firsthand how much professional help can make a difference made me feel passionate about Wellness which is why I'm grateful to the sponsor of this episode better help is something interfering with your happiness or preventing you from achieving your goals regardless of whether you have a clinical mental health issue like depression or anxiety or if you just are a normal human being living in this world and going through a hard time therapy can give you the tools to approach your life in a very different way better help's mission is to make therapy more affordable and more accessible and this is an important Mission 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with betterhelp click the link in the description or visit betterhelp.com slit history thank you again betterhelp for supporting the channel the United States was always a huge Cornerstone of cement one of its first big projects was the Erie Canal which we've covered previously one of the assistants to the Canal's Chief Engineers was a man named canvas white who went to the United Kingdom shortly after getting his position there he studied the various projects of the then most industrialized Nation on the planet and their use of hydraulic cement this was of key interest to him since the United States still depended on natural cement which was of a lower quality than the new kind plus natural cement couldn't be used for a canal it would wear down and collapse from water damage so hydraulic cement was the perfect fit returning to the new world with this knowledge he began looking for ways to apply what he had learned Europe held the only stocks of hydraulic cement in New York state wasn't buying so he had a method but no materials as he looked for ways to apply the techniques Mr White found a partner this man Andrew barau knew of local Limestone deposits that could be used to create hydraulic cement the two men made an agreement and white secured a patent on this new production method under bto's name this new production method proved extremely successful as 4.65 million gallons of white cement was used in constructing the Erie Canal and this was just his first project one of his later projects had him Consulting the Reconstruction of the Lehi canal in northeastern Pennsylvania from 1827 to 1829 this project required a large amount of cement not nearly as large as the IR Canal but large enough to Warrant the construction of a plant this cement plant located in the Lehigh Gap operated from 1826 to 1830 when a second plant began production at se frid's Bridge Pennsylvania it's worth noting that sea Freed's Bridge was renamed cementon after 1901 which should show you how important this material is to the region in 1853 construction on a railroad line between Easton and Allentown Pennsylvania came to the Lehigh Valley this new Lehigh Valley railroad's Construction exposed large deposits of natural cement rock near Coplay Pennsylvania about a mile from cementon this was very important to David Oliver sailor an employer of the fire brick manufacturer in Allentown thanks to his job he was very familiar with cement kills but he also knew that he was surrounded by other cement workers who would know cement Rock when they saw it so this was his chance and he had to be careful not to let it slip away from him he started off by taking some samples of the rock stuffing them into his pocket not to draw attention to himself he finished the day without anyone noticing the deposits or the samples he had taken but once he got home he turned his stove into a makeshift cement Kil firing the material inside it he took them out and placed the samples inside his coffee grinder the result was a yellow powder concrete but not just any concrete this was exceptional concrete created from the jacksonburg Limestone that had formed 500 million years ago it turned out that sailor's deposit had a near Perfect Blend of elements for natural cement being high in lime and Clay but low in magnesia and iron it may not have been particularly shiny but sailor had just struck gold now he probably didn't know the chemical makeup of the Limestone but sailor was wise enough to know that they were some pretty remarkable rocks he bought Farmland north of Coplay just by the deposits joining him in this was Adam woliver and allent Tom politician and the county clerk plus their friend isaas together the three founded the cplay cement company in 1866 began building a cement plant in the Lehigh Valley they built two small Limestone kill for the plant but an issue arose they didn't have a way to powderize the concrete and the coffee grinder would not suffice for their plans so they took over an old distillery building near copay station and modified it slightly turning it into a makeshift grinder Mill from there they went to the railroad cut harvesting Limestone from the deposit and Hauling it a mile to their plant despite the makeshift nature of the operation it was quite profitable though we don't know exactly how much the business brought in what we do know is that it was enough to expand the plant in 1869 adding a new ston Mill that increased their production to 250 barrels of cement per day what the plant may have lacked in size it made up for in its incredible location it had access to the Lehigh Valley Railroad since it was built directly nearby but it also had water transportation and that's to say nothing of the sheer magnitude of raw material it had undivided access to sailor the company's president was well aware of this and continued to expand capitalizing on his fortune to great success by 1870 the company opened another Quarry west of the railroad cut tapping into the massive Limestone deposit in another area 1871 saw another addition to plant a increasing productivity drastically but the biggest change was yet to come you see during all of this sailor was still experimenting with cement and was about to make a major breakthrough he had discovered a seemingly new kind of hydraulic cement one which involved firing Limestone alongside various other minerals to create cement through a much more efficient process and on September the 26th 8 1971 sailor secured US patent number 11 19413 anchor cement however after improvements it eventually came to be known as sailor Portland cement which changed American industry Forever at the time most of the cement used for American Construction was imported from the United Kingdom the cement used to create the IR Canal well that was hydraulic but less resource efficient Portland cement had been produced in America 5 years before in Michigan but their size and location could never have matched the demands of American industry and were reliant on the British designs that were half a world away sailor had the first American grown design for Portland cement and had the resources to sell it for $3 a barrel with this America's industrial growth was fully independent the United States no longer had to rely on the British for cement and was now free to surpass them in industry in another 50 years the United States produced four times as much cement as Great Britain which as a result became the second largest producer and with this sailor had enabled the United States to become an industrial Juggernaut and he wasn't done with the design either he brought on a chemist named John W eard to refine the method by 187 five his production matched the grade of cement made in England hence the name sailor Portland cement in 1876 the Philadelphia Centennial International exhibition was held to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the United States 10 million visitors from 37 nations came to see and compete for distinction and sailor achievements were honored for their quality and this came with a great deal of attention sailor cement was used in the fortification of Staten Island New York Harbor the Arlington National Cemetery amphitheaters Philadelphia's drexo Building New York's Woolworth Building the Lincoln Memorial and the jetty works of the Mississippi at New Orleans exclusively used concrete from Sailor needless to say business was booming given the astonishing rise of his company Sor needed to expand to match the Nationwide demand so he built an additional Kil in 1873 two more in 1874 six iron grinding Mills a Crusher and four more kills in 1877 it still wasn't enough 1882 saw the creation of three more kils and two more Mills bringing the total of kils up to 17 however demand was only rising and the kils could not match it and that's not surprising since the Dome of the kils that that the company had been using were the first model of cement kill ever used in America every use of them required a fresh supply of fuel and alternating layers of coal clinker had to be extracted manually and hand sorted for overburn Burt and under Burt material they also needed to be rotated constantly while burning and that was the least labor intensive part of the job costs were massive and this is to say nothing of the furnace itself which led a massive amount of heat Escape out the top this required a new solution perhaps a breakthrough sailor had a great deal of Ingenuity to match and more importantly he knew a lot of people who could help him get there but he would never see the day as sadly David Oliver sailor died on July the 21st 1884 but in his legacy he came to be known as the father of the American cement industry 8 eight years after his death the cop cement company began construction of a second plant this time utilizing new cement Kil technology they elected to use a new kind of upright Killin which took more labor but used less fuel this design was the elorg Kiln and these are the structures that defined the cplay cement Kil they were built from red brick on the outside and lined with fire brick on the interior they had four floors consisting of three chambers for material one for the initial heating another for burning off excess and a third for cooling afterward coal was introduced through holes on the third floor and metal rods were used to feed it into the second floor firing chamber also on that second floor were four air intakes the material went from the preheating chamber on the top of the Kil into a narrow Central chamber for burning and then dropped down to a wider bottom for cooling and the heat from the cooling material assisted in warming incoming contents above the bottom of the kill also had great bars of 6 ft above the lower floor which collected burnt clinker to be loaded into wagons for storage on the second floor what made the allenberg kils special was the firing chamber where other Kil had most of the heat Escape without being put to use the firing chamber was Lo located in a bottleneck in the Kiln meaning all Rising heat would concentrate into the firing chamber it directed the draft into one choke point making that narrow point the single hottest spot in the Kil at all times rather than the aimless heat of the previous designs the firing chamber got so hot that even with the fire brick lining the central chamber needed tension straps to keep it from collapsing due to heat expansion well this needs a lot of manual stoking it was extremely fuele efficient compared to the previous designs however attentive viewers may remember from the beginning of the video These Kil were taken out of service in 1904 11 years after they were built you may be asking if they were so good why didn't they last well that's because they weren't the only kinds of kill around another kind of Kil was the rotary Kil and it was developed around the same time as these they were less fuel efficient than the allenburg kills but needed much less labor so as of 1904 the CPL cement company constructed rotary kils in a third plant a few hundred ft west of the elenburg kils and took them out of commission most of the second plant was demolished soon after and the only remnants were the kils in the 1920s the top Chambers were cleared out for storage newspapers reported that the only reason they had hadn't been torn down was that there was some technical problem when they attempted to however they would never get a chance to tear it down in 1976 the second plants remnants were added to the National register of historic places the company donated the entire area to Lehi County since they weren't going to get any more use out of them the country decided to turn the area into a museum celebrating the economic development of the region and the industrial breakthrough that changed the nation and the world cement is needed in nearly all construction so if you look at this from a historic perspective if the United States was ever going to surpass its foreign competitors it needed to produce at home the Coplay cement company gave the nation the key to economic domination and goes largely on recognized for its efforts the only remnants that can be seen are these special cement kils today it's known as the Sailor Park industrial Museum named for the father of American cement the man who stuffed some limestone in his pocket and changed the world we'll leave it there for today thank you all so much for watching and subscribing until next time I'm your host Ryan soash signing off

Channel: IT'S HISTORY

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Id: xcEXYNLJ3Ro

Length: 20min 19sec (1219 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 19 2023