West Point Foundry Preserve

West Point Foundry Preserve occupies about 90 acres in a ravine along Foundry Brook, preserving the site of one of 19th-century America's most significant industrial operations. Gouverneur Kemble established the foundry in 1818, and by the Civil War it was turning out Parrott guns, the rifled artillery patented by Robert Parker Parrott that outranged standard Union ordnance. Lincoln came to see a test-firing in June 1862, not long after visiting West Point across the river. At its wartime peak the foundry employed 1,400 workers and cast roughly 2,000 cannon and three million shells; it also built some of the country's first steam locomotives, ironclad components, and pipe for New York City's water system, before closing in 1911.