Lodge

Joseph Lodge was a Pennsylvania-born wanderer who settled in South Pittsburg, Tennessee in 1877, drawn by the region's coal and iron industries. In 1896 he opened the Blacklock Foundry — named after his friend and minister — and began casting a range of iron products including cookware. The business grew steadily until May 1910, when a fire destroyed the entire foundry. Rather than fold, Joseph and his family rebuilt from scratch just a few blocks away, reopening within three months under the name Lodge Manufacturing Company. They survived the Great Depression by casting novelty items like garden gnomes and iron animals to keep workers employed. A pivotal modernization came in 1950 when Lodge converted from hand-pouring molten iron to an automated molding process — a move that allowed it to scale up just as competitors like Griswold and Wagner were being sold off and eventually discontinued. Lodge is still entirely family-owned, now 130 years in, operates two foundries in South Pittsburg, and sells over 200 cast iron products globally — making it the oldest continuously operating cast iron cookware manufacturer in the United States.