Soon after the Federal government built a harbor for the Calumet River in the 1870s to remove industrial traffic from the Chicago River, steel mills flocked to this area. The location had the advantages of nearby limestone and coal in the Illinois Basin, cheap transport of iron ore using the Great lakes and efficient distribution of products because of the growing rail network and Chicago's more centralized location in the country. It have written notes on each steel company. It has been on my todo list to create a map that indexes them. But someone has already done that for me.
 |
| Tony Margis posted |
This color code is used in the images below.
- blue: Illinois Steel, later it was US Steel South Works
- yellow: Iroquois This mill moved to Youngstown Sheet & Tube
- orange: Wisconsin (International Harvester) Steel
- red: Interlake/Acme/Federal Furnace (the iron was converted to steel further inland at Cleveland-Cliffs/ArcelorMittal/Interlake/Acme Steel)
- purple: LTV/Republic Steel/Interstate/Grand Crossing Tack
- green: Interlake/Acme/By Products Coke
US Steel/Carnegie/Illinois/Chicago Steel was so big it takes two aerial photos to cover the land.
 |
| 0bwq09054 from ILHAP |
 |
| 0bwq05068 from ILHAP |
Dark Yellow is where Iroquois Steel started south of 95th Street. Light Yellow is the landfill they built and moved to. By this 1938 image, they had pretty well cleared their old operations south of the 95th.
 |
| 0bwq05068 from ILHAP |
The rest of the mills.
 |
| 0bwq05006 from ILHAP |
No comments:
Post a Comment