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newsletter  Privacy Statement  Long Pond Ironworks  The Hills of
Ramapo  by Mary Jasch  There are some places in the woods that
tell a story to those who come to listen. Try it. Take a ride to
Long Pond Ironworks State Park in West Milford and park at the
visitors center. Walk past the old stone-rubble houses sitting
like giant sculptures on the lawn, amble down into the woods and
look for the dirt crossroads surrounded by trees and the ruins
of a town. The area now called Hewitt was once the Long Pond
Ironworks.  At Long Pond Ironworks men took iron ore from the
Ramapo hills, burned and extracted it into pig iron and forged
it into wrought. Farms and schools and whole support systems
sprung up around the ironworks village to maintain this rugged
venture. The people involved--ironmasters, workers and families
--were pioneers in an industry of uncertainty.  Standing at the
crossroads of this ghost town, you can sense the men and women
who helped set th