Joliet Iron Works: Steel Capital of the Prairie
Illinois
When the Bessemer steel process arrived in America after the Civil War, it did not find its most important early home in Pittsburgh. It found one of them here, in Joliet, Illinois, about forty miles southwest of Chicago, and the iron works that rose on this site briefly made Joliet one of the industrial capitals of the United States.
The company that would become the Joliet Iron and Steel Works was organized in eighteen sixty-nine, when the nation's railroads were booming and the demand for steel rails seemed bottomless. Construction on the plant began that year and was completed by eighteen seventy-three, when engineers erected a Bessemer converter designed by Alexander Holley, the leading American expert on the pneumatic steelmaking process. It was the ninth operating Bessemer plant in the country, a significant industrial achievement at a time when the technology was still new.
The Panic of eighteen seventy-three delayed full operations, but once the plant found its footing, it grew into the second largest steel mill in the United States. Thousands of workers streamed in from across Europe, Polish, Slovak, Italian, and other immigrant communities put down roots in Joliet, giving the city the working-class character it retained well into the twentieth century. Joliet earned the nickname the City of Steel and Stone.
The works passed through a succession of corporate owners, Illinois Steel in eighteen eighty-nine, Federal Steel in eighteen ninety-eight, and finally United States Steel after J.P. Morgan assembled that behemoth in nineteen oh one. The Joliet operations ended its first long run in nineteen thirty-six as the Depression gutted steel demand.
The ruins of the blast furnaces and ore pits sat largely undisturbed for decades until the Forest Preserve District of Will County purchased the property and opened it as the Joliet Iron Works Historic Site. Walking among the crumbling brick walls and rusted ironwork today, you can trace the industrial skeleton of a plant that once helped build the railroads that stitched the continent together.
