This gallery starts with a picture from 2008, when I discovered the amazing row of boulders behind Home Depot in Williston. Iron boulders seem to be especially plentiful in that area--rocks with coloration that indicates the presence of ferrous compounds. In Brandon, where I grew up, the early settlers had to clear an abundance of orange rocks from fields where they wanted to grow things. Eventually, people realized they had the ore from which to extract iron, and built a blast furnace to smelt it. Blast furnaces can be seen in the Forestdale section of Brandon, and in Pittsford, where little bits of blue slag still turn up in Furnace Brook. For those who would like to explore this history, I recommend industrial archaeologist Victor Rolando's "200 Years of Soot and Sweat."