Eisenerz

Eisenerz ("Iron ore") is a market place and old mining town in Styria, Austria, 68 mi. N.W. of Graz by rail. Pop. (2001) 6,400. It is situated in the deep Erzbach Valley, dominated on the east by the Pfaffenstein (6140 ft.), on the west by the Kaiserschild (6830 ft.), and on the south by the Erzberg (5030 ft.). It has an interesting example of a medieval fortified church, a Gothic edifice founded by Rudolph of Habsburg in the 13th century and rebuilt in the 16th. The Erzberg or Ore Mountain furnishes such rich ore that it is quarried in the open air like stone, in the summer months. There is documentary evidence of the mines having been worked as far back as the 12th century. They afford employment to two or three thousand hands in summer and about half as many in winter, and yield some 800,000 tons of iron per annum. Eisenerz is connected with the mines by the Erzberg railway, a bold piece of engineering work, 14 mi. long, constructed on the Abt's rack-and-pinion system. It passes through some beautiful scenery, and descends to Vordernberg, an important center of the iron trade situated on the south side of the Erzberg.

Eisenerz possesses, in addition, twenty-five furnaces, which produce iron, and particularly steel, of exceptional excellence. A few miles to the N.W. of Eisenerz lies the castle of Leopoldstein, and near it the beautiful Leopoldsteiner Lake. This lake, with its dark-green water, situated at an altitude of 2028 ft., and surrounded on all sides by high peaks, is not big, but is very deep, having a depth of 520ft.