The furnace continued in anemic health until the Panic of 1907. As a result of that crisis, it was idle for most of 1908 and half of 1909. It was operated in 1910 largely to use up its inventory of local ore, and went out of blast on January 23, 1911. Bellefonte Furnace had closed in December. The shutdown of the furnaces was to be temporary, but both facilities were no longer remunerative to operate, and no buyer willing to operate them could be found. Leftover pig iron and furnace slag from Nittany Furnace were shipped out over the Nittany Valley RR in 1912–1913. The furnace and railroad were put up for sale in 1914 and the furnace demolished. The furnace site was later used by the Titan Metal and Manufacturing Company. Legacy Passing through the hands of four owners during its troubled 23-year history, Nittany Furnace never fulfilled the expectations developed when it replaced the antiquated (charcoal) Bellefonte Furnace. It should arguably never have been built: by the time it went into blast in 1888, the price per ton of iron had already been driven below $22, a historic low, and it would almost never rise above that figure until the onset of World War I. The sprawling steel works of Pittsburgh, fed by Mesabi Range ore, could produce iron more cheaply than the furnaces at Bellefonte ever could. The principal advantage of a Bellefonte location — proximity to local ore deposits — was negated by the availability of easily mined, high-grade Mesabi ore, hauled by rail. Wes Gephart, though his personal brilliance and ability to attract investment, was able to cover the decline to some extent. By his death in 1905, he had assembled a seemingly puissant empire of two iron furnaces, extensive ore mines, and two railroads. But even during his lifetime, Bellefonte had seen the end of its glory: after 1890, its population, heretofore steadily growing, would decline for the next thirty years. Nor did Gephart's empire long survive him; little more than a decade after his death, the furnaces were demolished, the mines shut down, and one railroad scrapped. Only the Central Railroad remained, staggering to a pauper's grave in 1918, sold for the wartime price its scrap could bring. The era of Nittany Furnace was the twilight of ironmaking in Bellefonte. Though not fully apparent at the time, neither the rising lime industry nor