Bloomery forges could not produce cast items such as hollowware, potash kettles, or the hammerheads and anvil bases artisans needed for their forges. With a blast furnace, an ironmaker could both increase the scale of iron smelting and provide customers with iron castings. However, in colonial times a furnace required an investment of over £3,000, while a fully equipped bloomery forge cost only about £500. Additionally, blast furnace proprietors had to assemble a workforce at least ten times larger than they would need for a bloomery, provide a continuous supply of ore and fuel over a period of months, and create a stable organization to manage the whole enterprise. Bankruptcies among the initial furnace owners in Salisbury showed how difficult these tasks could be. Philip Livingston, proprietor of the manor across the border in New York, had access to capital that no one in Connecticut could match. In 1743 he had a blast furnace built at Ancram, in the western part of his manor, to smelt ore brought over the Connecticut border from Ore Hill. Nineteen years elapsed before Ethan Allen and his partners managed to launch the first such venture in the Salisbury district. Blast furnace proprietors needed an absolutely reliable water supply, since they had to keep their furnace’s running continuously for months. The place closest to Ore Hill that could provide such a supply was the outlet of Wononskopomuc Lake, soon to be renamed Furnace Pond. Water from this lake could run the approximately two-horsepower air pump needed for an eighteenth-century blast furnace throughout the year. A thriving colonial economy in 1760 encouraged John Hazeltine of Massachusetts—founder of the town of Upton, dealer in lands, and proprietor of the bloomery forge in Sutton—to send his son Paul to scout out investment opportunities in mineral-rich and underpopulated Salisbury. Here Paul met Ethan Allen, later to gain fame at Fort Ticonderoga, who had just sold his Cornwall farm for fifty pounds.