The five Valentine brothers and William Thomas became the most successful ironmasters in the region. Valentine and Thomas operations which incorporated all of the former Dunlop holdings were producing as much iron as all of the other county furnaces combined. Ultimately, the company eventually assembled furnaces, forges and ore banks covering nearly 6,500 acres. By 1824 they were also operating the countya s first rolling mill with a puddling furnace, a process that was cheaper and faster to produce finished iron than older hammer forges.
Members of the Valentine family continued to make innovations in modernizing and manufacturing iron, including building a hot-blast coke-fueled Bellefonte Furnace in 1888, and new ore-washing technologies used at Scotia and elsewhere that were introduced in 1842.
The Valentine ore washing plant increased the efficiency of the Valentine production operation dramatically by first removing the dirt on the ore before it was put into the blast furnace, making the charge more pure. Once the ore was washed, only cleaned ore needed to be transported to the furnace, saving time and manpower. Until the other ironmasters caught on to the innovation, they could not produce the same quality of iron as the Valentine operation did. The site has now become the Benner Commerce Park, seeking once again to bring innovation to the location.