The peacefulness of Canaan, the second smallest town in Connecticut, belies a history that is anything but quiet. For it was here, beginning in the early 18th century, peaking in the 19th and ending in the early 20th, that stone blast furnaces poured forth red-hot, high quality Salisbury iron. Mountains and valleys were stripped bare of trees to make charcoal to feed the hungry furnaces. A huge factory once stood at the Great Falls and employed hundreds of men to manufacture cannons, war materiel and huge railroad tires from the famed Salisbury iron. One hundred years ago the center of town, now so quiet, was a beehive of commercial activity, a boomtown, and early entrepreneurs dreamed of channeling the power of the falls to fuel an industrial empire.
Thankfully, the iron industry moved to the easily accessible surface iron mines of the Midwest, the plans for empire collapsed, the ravaged mountains and valleys reclaimed their natural splendor, and the peaceful life of a small town returned. Today, the stunning and unspoiled natural beauty of Falls Village remains its most prized and closely guarded asset, and its rich New England heritage remains firmly in place and guides its future.
