Apples and Cider at Pennsylvania's Hopewell Furnace
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| The Apple Orchard at Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site, Photo by the NPS |
I was honored to give a talk recently at Hopewell Furnace National
Historic Site, a beautiful spot in Souteastern Pennsylvania, about 60
miles from the city of Philadelphia, and a wonderful place to spend a
day exploring the historic village and hiking the adjacent trails.
The furnace was started in the 1770s by the locally-sort-of-famous
Mark Bird, a few miles from the Schuylkill River, and about 10 miles
from Pottstown, PA. This region of Pennsylvania was known for its
many iron furnaces, and Hopewell is a great example that produced
cast iron, cannon shot, shells, pig iron, and even became known for
its wood burning cook stoves. My talk centered around cider and
fermentation, and took place in the historic orchard that is part of
the site (Cope).
Apple growing has a
long history, as evidenced by the Greeks and Romans, who were
cultivating apples sometime in the First Millennium BCE (Cope). When
people started making cider is less well known. The first written
accounts of cider are around 2000 years old, and come from the
writings of Greco-Roman geographer Strabo, and the Roman philosopher
Pliny the Elder. And the first detailed account of orchards for cider
making come from Asturias in Northern Spain in a will written in 803 (Pucci and Cavallo 7).
In North America,
the first settlers brought apple seeds and seedlings with them, and
orchards are documented in the records by the early 1600s. From the
start, apples and cider were an important part of communities
throughout the Colonial period in the US. The first documented
orchard in the new colonies was near Boston, and was producing fruit
before 1623. In Jamestown, Virginia, apples were being grown by 1629,
and by the 1640s, apples were being grown throughout the north
eastern colonies. There are even reports of old apple trees in
Pennsylvania that reportedly predated the arrival of colonists, and suggest that Lenape and other Native Americans had been
growing and eating apples before the arrival of European colonizers
(Cope:14-15).
In early Pennsylvania, apples were the primary fruit crop on most farms and homesteads (Cope:16), and the
orchard at Hopewell Furnace is an unusual example of an actual
historic orchard. The first evidence of the orchard there is found in
a 1788 Pennsylvania Gazette article that refers to “an excellent
young bearing orchard of about 250 trees of the best fruit”
(Cope:2). Furnace records document the existence of an orchard in the
community throughout the 1800s until a decline late in the century.
In 1940, the orchard was partially replanted, and this largely makes
up the orchard that exists on site today. Many trees have been
replanted over the years, with efforts to plant heirloom varieties
that more accurately reflect the types of trees used throughout its
history.
This brings us to a
question: Just because they were growing apples, how do we know they
were making cider? At Hopewell, there are records from the company
store from the early and mid-1800s that show the sale of apple
products, including applejack, cider, and apple vinegar (Cope). We have to
keep in mind that there was no refrigeration in that time period, and
anyone who has had a jug of fresh apple cider from an orchard in
their fridge for a couple weeks, has probably seen the expansion of
the jug due to the start of fermentation. Fresh apple cider ferments
naturally and quickly, and we can be certain that the company store at
Hopewell was selling what we now call hard cider.
Still, there is not much
information currently available about cider production at Hopewell.
From the records I have seen, there is no mention of who was
harvesting the apples, who was making the cider, how it was stored or
sold. All we currently know is that they were growing apples,
and cider was being sold in the company store. As a seasonal
activity, apple harvest and pressing was probably done by workers at
the furnace when the apples were ready, taking a break for a day or
two per week from other activities. Wooden vessels – essentially
barrels of various sizes – were likely filled at this time as well,
and then consumed throughout the year at various points of
fermentation. It’s what people drank after all.
We do know that
cider was the preferred drink in the US colonies, and people drank it
both fresh from the press, and, more regularly in its fermented form,
since it could be stored from season to season. Fermentation is and
was a form of preservation! The early colonists were accustomed to
dirty water, and saw drinking cider as a necessity. Settlers planted
apples from Maine to as far south as Georgia. A little later, John
“Johnny Appleseed” Chapman promoted the growing of apples
westward, and by the early 1800s, apples were everywhere in the US.
By the time of US independence, cider had been a major part of
American culture for 150 years. (Altworth 2015)
In fact, cider was
the common drink in the US right into the 1850s. Then the country
largely began to urbanize during the Industrial Revolution, and
customs and traditions began to change. Beer took hold in the cities,
and cider’s popularity began to wane. It was during this time, that
many orchardists began switching to eating/dessert apples that could
be shipped to the cities as a part of the agricultural commodity
chain. In the early 1900s, prohibition likely further contributed to
the decline of cider in the US, into the 1970s when just a small
handful of commercial producers existed (Pucci and Cavallo 2021).
Today, cider is
seeing a bit of a renaissance in the US, with nearly 3000 cideries
operating across the country. There are orchards that are once again
producing cider-specific varieties, and the cider market is growing
year to year (IBIS World). The orchard at Hopewell Furnace is still
producing apples, and while nobody is making cider with them, there
is a “pick-your-own” event throughout the late Summer. People are
drinking cider again, and not because we’re scared of the water,
we’re drinking cider because it’s delicious!
For more information about the Orchard at Hopewell Furncace, visit:
https://www.nps.gov/hofu/learn/historyculture/apple-orchard.htm
Words Referenced:
Altworth, Jeff (2015). Cider Made Simple: All About Your New Favorite Drink. Chronicle Books, San Francisco.
Cider Scene (2020). Why is it called Hard Cider? Nov 12, 2020. Available at: https://www.ciderscene.com/blog/cider-posts/why-called-hard-cider/.
Cope, Heidi, et al. (2009). Orchard Management Plan Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site, Elverson, Pennsylvania. National Park Service, Department of the Interior. Boston, MA.
IBIS World (2023) Cider Production in the US - Number of Businesses. April 3, 2023. Available at: https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/number-of-businesses/cider-production-united-states/
Pucci, Dan, and Craig Cavallo (2021). American Cider: a Modern Guide to a Historic Beverage. Ballantine Books, New York.
Turdo, Mark (2018). Hard Facts on the Origins of “Hard Cider.” Feb 11, 2018. Available at: https://pommelcyder.wordpress.com/2018/02/11/hard-facts-on-the-origins-of-hard-cider/.
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