bondholders of the Centre Iron Company to take over the furnace, and was incorporated on January 28, 1891. The president was J. Wesley Gephart, Bellefonte lawyer and industrialist, and the treasurer and manager was Robert Valentine, of the original ironmaking family. A report just prior to the charter records the permanent board of directors as James H. Campbell, of Wayne, Oliver Hazard Reighard, of Williamsport, Charles W. Wilhelm, of Reading, Daniel Rhoades, Valentine, and Gephart. (Reighard was connected with another Valentine Iron Company, later the Williamsport Iron and Nail Works.) Gephart was not only president of the iron company (and the Nittany Valley Railroad, still an affiliate), but an active railroad promoter in another direction. He became president of the Central Railroad of Pennsylvania, which, on December 2, 1893, opened its line from Mill Hall to Bellefonte, crossing and connecting with the Nittany Valley about a mile east of Bellefonte. The new line connected with the Beech Creek Railroad, controlled by the Pennsylvania Railroad's rival, the New York Central Railroad. At the beginning of this year, the iron furnace had "re-opened", presumably the result of an upswing in the depressed iron market as the rival Bellefonte Furnace did the same. With the construction of the new railroad, the furnace's traffic was rapidly diverted over that line, prompting a lawsuit from the Pennsylvania Railroad to enforce the contract made with the Centre Iron Company. While a lower court initially held the contract not to be binding on Valentine Iron, the ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in 1895, and the furnace was forced to remove its traffic from the Central Railroad of Pennsylvania. Due to this serious setback, Gephart was compelled to step down as president of Valentine Iron and the Nittany Valley, and thereafter devoted himself to the management of the Central Railroad. He was replaced at Valentine Iron by John P. Harris, and by Mortimer O'Donoghue at the Nittany Valley. O'Donoghue also became superintendent of Valentine Iron the next year. The furnace operated only intermittently under Valentine Iron management, and in early 1899, it was bought by the Empire Steel and Iron Company, along with the Nittany Valley RR and the associated ore lands. Empire Steel renamed the plant "Nittany Furnace," and sent Walter Kennedy, vice-president of engineering, to survey the local ore resources in March 1899. Empire decided to use a mixture of local and