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The Valley Iron Works was one of eight local rolling
mills that helped to make the Coatesville area a center of boiler plate production
in the mid eighteen hundreds. The mill operated, with a few interruptions, for over
eighty years, from the late 1830’s until it was dismantled in 1919. It reached
its pinnacle of prosperity in the 1870’s and 1880’s under the management
of Charles and Joseph Pennock. It employed 200 men, boasted the largest plate mill
in the state, and supplied wide iron plates for the thriving locomotive building industry
in Philadelphia and the fledging shipyards constructing iron hulled vessels that flourished
along the Delaware River from Wilmington to Philadelphia. Two of its most important
contributions was supplying iron plates for the City of Peking, the largest American
steamship ever built, and for the USS Dauphin, one of the first iron hulled ships
of the US Navy.ourt