The iron industry was an important part of the local economy in the 19th century. The blast furnaces were fueled by charcoal made from the area trees. The workers who cut down the trees and turned them into charcoal were known as colliers. Large areas of forest were cut down to feed the demand for charcoal, and many areas were clear cut repeatedly, every three to four decades.

In an 1885 report on “Charcoal Manufacture in the Salisbury Iron Region,” it was noted that the iron furnace at Cornwall Bridge (established in 1833) used oak and chestnut wood for making charcoal, while the Kent Iron Company used a more diverse mix of hard and soft woods.

“…where the plow cannot be used nor cattle fed, forest trees and timber grow luxuriantly. Few places can be found on Cornwall’s mountains where woodsmen and colliers cannot reach the trees with the axe or bring down the timber and fuel.”

~ Rev. Timothy Stone, 1840s

“Cream Hill, before the woodman’s ax was heard there, was covered with lofty trees of various kinds, the surface not being entangled with underbrush, as much of the forest in the town was.”

~ Theodore S. Gold, History of Cornwall, 1877

“I have watched what twenty years can do in my own hill pasture. In 1924, I took a snapshot, looking down across an open fern-and-boulder-strewn pasture slope to the house and barns. Today, from the spot where I stood with my Kodak in 1924, you cannot even see a roof. The pasture has become the kind of dense, poor forest known here-abouts as ‘sprout land.’ “

~ Lewis Gannett, Cream Hill: Discoveries of a Week-End Countryman, 1949