THE MAGIC CITY OF STEEL

by Steve McShane, Archivist/Curator, Calumet Regional Archives, Indiana University-Northwest

The Steel Industry | The Steel Works | The Town of Gary

On March 12, 1906, construction engineers, led through a snowstorm by Ralph E. Rowley, began laying out the mill, harbor, and railroad yards. By early summer, teams of horses and mules (many from area farms) began leveling and grading the dunes on the lakeshore. Buildings and facilities rose rapidly above the sand and swamps, creating an impressive industrial skyline. The engineers relocated the Grand Calumet River, the "moat" between the southern end of the mill site and the north end of the town site, and also redirected three major rail lines traversing the area.

The Corporation had envisioned a massive mill complex, and it was not disappointed. Over twelve million cubic yards of sand were removed. Foundations for the mill structures required two million yards of concrete. The railroad yards could hold 15,000 cars. A mile long harbor was built, twenty-five feet deep and 250 feet wide, between two parallel piers extending 2,360 feet into Lake Michigan; it included a turning basin 750 feet in diameter to accommodate the huge iron ore boats.

In just over two years, on July 23, 1908, the ore boat Elbert H. Gary entered Gary Works harbor with the first load of iron ore. In December, the first of twelve blast furnaces began producing iron. In February 1909, two open hearths tapped the first "heat" of steel and the rail mill produced its first finished product. By the end of the year, 6,800 employees had produced 570,000 tons of steel.

Both steel production and mill construction continued at an accelerated pace. By 1920, Gary Works contained twelve blast furnaces, 838 coke ovens, forty-five open hearth furnaces, two 25-ton converters, a rail mill, billet mill, slabbing mill, two plate mills, twelve merchant mills, axle mill, tie plate mill, steel wheel plant, and a dozen mechanical shops covering 300,000 square feet. The buildings embraced over 100,000 tons of structural steel, 9,000 tons of corrugated sheets, 4,000 squares of tile roofing, and 163,000,000 bricks.

Consistent with Judge Gary's philosophy of integrated, continuous production, the steelmaking process flowed from east to west: raw materials (primarily coal) were converted to coke in the coke ovens, and entered the blast furnaces, along with iron ore and limestone (from Minnesota and Michigan, via Lake Michigan), creating molten iron, which was poured into Bessemer converters and/or open hearth furnaces. The resulting steel was then poured into ingot molds for shaping into plates, rails, bars, and slabs, eventually processed into finished products. Gary Works, along with other U.S.Steel subsidiaries located near the original mill, produced raw steel, rails, wire, hoops, tin plate, rods, pipes, tubes, sheets, wheels, axles, and cement. In rapid, efficient fashion, Gary Works became U.S. Steel's flagship plant and assumed the leadership role among steelmakers in the Calumet Region and across the nation. Between 1906 and 1930, U. S. Steel's Gary Works truly became "one of the industrial wonders of the twentieth century" and served as the capstone to the Calumet Region's industrialization trend in the Golden Age of Industry.

The Town of Gary ->