U.S. Steel’s Smokeless Smokestacks – Dec. 1971

Although we’re all pretty used to seeing great aerial photography taken by drones, that wasn’t the case fifty years ago, when the above photo was featured on the front page of the Journal on December 5, 1971. So I’m sure the photograph attracted some attention.

As the caption notes, “Steelmaking complex at U. S. Steel in Lorain is captured in this dramatic aerial photo taken by Tom Whittington, The Journal’s chief photographer.

“In the center is the new $80 million basic oxygen process (BOP) facility with structural steel in place to enclose the east end of the BOP shop’s charging aisle where molten iron, scrap and other materials are charged into the top of furnace.

“In foreground are idle open hearth furnaces with 12 stacks which no longer below heavy clouds of smoke because the open hearths have been replaced by the BOP shop.

“In the upper right and left are the five blast furnaces at the Lorain plant. The blast furnace is the meeting place of the raw materials – the charge of iron ore, coke and limestone – from which pig iron is produced.

“In the far background is a portion of the steel plant ore docks on the Black River, and the ore storage area.

“The Lorain steel plant currently employs more than 5,000 hourly workers.”

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I was lucky enough to work one summer at the mill while I was in college. I wrote about it back here on this post.

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Here’s an aerial view circa 1975, courtesy of the Ohio History Connection.

U. S. Steel Shuts Down Last Open Hearth Furnaces – Feb. 25, 1971

For many older people that lived in Lorain all their lives, the sight of a sky filled with orange-colored smoke coming from “National Tube" was just part of day-to-day life. I remember seeing it as a kid on W. 30th Street in the early 1960s and wondering what it was.

But that all came to an end when U. S. Steel shut down the “smoke-belching open hearth furnaces” mentioned in the front page article above, which appeared in the Journal on Feb. 25, 1971 – fifty years ago today.

As the article notes, “The new $80 million basic oxygen steelmaking complex will completely replace the open hearths which have been spewing heavy clouds of orange smoke for years.

“The basic oxygen process of steelmaking, known by steel men as BOP, will mark a new era in steel production at the Lorain steel facility founded in 1895.

“One of two 220-ton BOP furnaces is now in operation on three eight-hour shifts daily producing about 220 tons of steel every hour without smoke.”

Of particular interest in the article is the number of employees at the mill. The article notes, “The steel plant is operating at a high pace with an estimated 7,400 production workers to meet increased demands for steel and steel products.

“More than 400 new employes have been hired at Lorain Works since last Dec. 13.”

It sure made for a good life for those workers (who earned every penny), and a robust Lorain as a result.

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So when did the Open Hearth era begin at the mill? The year was 1909. Click here to read all about it.

Hippies at the Steel Mill

Although Gene Patrick had not revived his Passing Scene comic strip at the Lorain Journal by September 1970, he was still around.

Below is one of his cartoons, accompanying an interesting Journal article by Staff Writer Jack LaVriha from the August 14, 1970 edition that was a pretty good indicator of what was going on culturally at that time: shoulder length hair being worn by some young men. But in this case, the young adults in question were steelworkers at the Mill in Lorain – and the company had to deal with it, mainly for safety concerns.

It’s funny thinking back how disturbing the sight of long hair on male youth was back then (especially now in 2020, when anything goes when it comes to appearance in this age of tattoos, piercings and shaved heads).

Next week, we’ll keep going on this theme and head down to Lakeview Park in the summer of 1970.

Making Way for New Pipe Mill at National Tube – June 1958

Back when Lorain was defined by its steel mill, the goings-on at the plant was of much interest to its residents and consequently was covered in great detail by the Lorain Journal.

Sixty years ago, the National Tube Division’s Lorain Works was getting ready to construct a new continuous buttweld pipe mill. To make room for it, some buildings had to be torn down in the name of progress.

That’s the focus of the photo and caption below, which appeared on the front page of the Lorain Journal on June 13, 1958.

Last of the U. S. Steel Ore Bridges Comes Down

Right before Christmas I received an interesting email from Mr. James Shedron of New London, Ohio, about ore bridges – those large, distinctive looking cranes used for loading and unloading ore. You can see them in the two vintage postcards above.

James wrote to me about the waning days of the ore bridges at U. S. Steel.

He wrote, "I am a retired steelworker from “the Mill" in Lorain. I spent most of my time at the blast furnaces and ore-unloading docks. I want to share with you these old pics of the last of the ore bridges (No. 6) which was taken down on December 17, 1994."

Here are his photos.

“No. 6 ore bridge was the last of the ore bridges demolished, “ he explained. He noted that No. 6 was built some time around 1960, and had more capacity, as well as updated electrical systems. "No. 4 and No. 5, which were much older, were taken down sometime around 1977. These machines became obsolete with the advent of self-unloading Great Lakes ore carriers,” he added.

According to James, there were many changes on the docks beginning in the 1970s.

"During 1975-76 a new conveyor-belt unloading system was built at the USS docks to accommodate those self-unloaders. The Hulett machines, which dropped their buckets into the hatches of the old-style ore-carriers, also became obsolete and by 1982 they were no longer needed.

"Many jobs were eliminated; by the mid to late '80s, there were two guys remaining at the Docks operating and maintaining the self-unloading system.

“I was fortunate to board those ore-carriers when they would come to Lorain to unload their cargo. We had walkie-talkies at the docks, and we would communicate with the vessels out on Lake Erie as soon as they got near the breakwall. We could unload 23,000 tons, a typical boatload, in about 6 hours."

But the No. 6 ore bridge continued to hang on until the 1990s. Why?

As James explained, "The company kept No. 6 to handle odd jobs in the ore storage yard until 1994 when it was demolished."

“One more thing of interest about these ore bridges, “ he added. "That tornado that hit Lorain in 1924 damaged the dock area. An ore bridge was destroyed."

In closing, James couldn’t help feeling a bit wistful about the mill.

He noted, “It’s too bad that the mill is pretty much down and out. Fresh out of Admiral King High School in 1970, I started employment there. My father-in-law worked there along with many of my close family. I had forty years of service when I left in 2010. Those years went by in a flash!”

Thanks to James for sharing his reminisces and photos.

Guest Blogger: Steel Mill Adventures Part 2

Here's the conclusion of my brother Ken's reminisces about working at the steel mill in the late 1970's and early 80's.

Steel Mill Adventures Part 2

By Ken Brady

Continuous Buttweld Mill at National Tube Co. in Lorain - 1960
(Courtesy Clevelandmemory.org)

After I moved around and became a millwright apprentice, there was more time for exploring. You could work in a mill where they had an active line, and you would see all kinds of old machinery in old sections that weren't being used anymore – huge old defunct lines. One of them was parallel to the Continuous Weld Mill, but set way down in the ground.

The stairs down to it were chained off, but another apprentice and I took some flashlights and went down there one night when we were bored. We went to the end of the mill, out of sight, and found a door that opened to a tunnel and went down into it. We followed it past old offices and stuff (most of the doors were locked), went through intersections, made turns and got lost.

The tunnels went on as far as you could see. There were more of the old posters and stuff, but we started worrying about getting in trouble for being gone so long.

We finally found some stairs that went up, followed them, hoping for an unlocked door at the top, but it was locked. We stood there wondering what the hell we were going to do, and the door opened! It was a pipe-fitter we both knew! We had come up the back way into his workshop.

He was amazed we had come up there, and said that he had only opened that door once and looked down it, and had never opened it again until that day.

We had to go up another flight of stairs just to get up to ground level, and we were in the wrong building! We had to cross a couple of wide yards to get back to the CW Mill, but at least we had picked up a bunch of old, old tools along the way in the tunnel. Our pockets were full of them, and they went into our tool lockers.

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Around 1982, I think, they closed the CW Mill and we apprentices were sent to another department in the rolling mill. They posted the schedules on Thursday, if I remember right, on a wide wall for all of the crews to see. And one Thursday, they had drawn a line through the schedules diagonally, all of them, and had written the word LAYOFF. Thousands of workers laid off just like that.

Management had to open up a whole new unemployment office in the otherwise falling apart shopping center at 21st and Leavitt Road just to process all of us. We were told to show up there on a certain day, and there we all were, in a huge line stretching across the parking lot. I felt bad for the thirty- and forty-year-old guys. I was only twenty three or twenty four, and I could go out and get another job, but those guys – old men, I thought then – what the hell were they going to do?

As for me, I ended up in the Army.

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When I got out of the Army in 1994, I tried to put together a resume. I had some questions about the time I was at U. S. Steel, and also wanted to get some kind of proof that I had worked there.

In those pre-internet days, I called information in Pittsburgh, and the operator told me that U. S. Steel was now called USX. After calling around and talking to dozens of people, trying to come up with records for Lorain-Cuyahoga works for the early 1980's, I was finally directed to the Archives Section. There, I talked to a gravel-voiced old geezer who told me he would research it.

After about a week, I got a letter in the mail, just stating that I had been a laborer at the mill between certain dates. Not much use.

Years before, we used to say, "What's good for U. S. Steel is good for the U. S.A." and make jokes about it at the mill. Now U. S. Steel no longer existed!

Ken of course was referring to when U. S. Steel was renamed USX Corporation in 1991. Since 2001, it has gone back to its old name, United States Steel Corporation.

Special thanks to Ken for sharing his anecdotes!

Guest Blogger: Steel Mill Adventures Part 1

Today and tomorrow, I have my first guest blogger – my brother Ken. He worked at the steel mill in the late 1970's and early 80's, and I asked him if he would write about some of his experiences, since I was blogging about the history of that iconic Lorain institution. So he came up with what you see below. It sounds like he had quite an interesting time!

Steel Mill Adventures Part 1
By Ken Brady

Courtesy CardCow.com

Lately, my brother Dan has blogged about the beginnings of the steel mill, which has always interested me. My experiences at the mill, though, were right before what became the bitter end for so many workers there.

When I was at the mill, I worked in the Pipe Mills hot end, the Rolling Mills, Galvanized, Pipe Mills finishing end, and then was a Millwright Apprentice, all in less than five years. You could jump around in the mill if you watched the job postings.

In the summer of '78, I worked in the Rolling Mills Inspection department – checking the billets for cracks and/or imperfections. They used a technique called magnaglow, in which a solution was sprayed on the pipes. Then, you would examine the billets under black light to look for cracks (if any), mark them with chalk, and then "scarfers" would melt the cracks off with scarfing torches. They had an automatic section on kind of a ferris wheel, with tarps covering the sides so it would be dark, and that was a prized job – so of course, I didn't work there. Business was still booming, and the automatic, easy process couldn't handle the volume.

So they came up with a manual process. There were two large racks that would hold four billets (fifty foot long square end pieces of steel, about six by six inches wide). We would have to mix up the solution in big vats, and then spray it on the pipes, pull a huge tarp like a shower curtain from both ends, then walk around with handheld black lights, marking the cracks. Then the craneman would take them and put them on the floor a little farther down for the scarfers. (The scarfers in this case were two jerks who we called Frick and Frack, who only enjoyed their own company and wouldn't talk to the rest of us, except to complain that we were going too fast or too slow.)

The interesting part was that we had to set up operations in a building that hadn't been used in a long time. I remember two of us from inspection walking up to the building on day one of the project with the foreman. When we got to the door, it had a huge rusty chain and lock securing it. We couldn't cut the lock with our bolt cutters, but were able to cut the chain. Then we couldn't get the door open, and the foreman sent us back to maintenance to get a chain come-along to force it open.

When we finally got into the huge building, everything was dark and dirty, and I was amazed to see bomb casings – World War II bomb casings – everywhere, lying on pallets all over the place! We made jokes about being blown up, and a few of us were a little nervous.

After they installed a huge magnetic crane, the craneman made quick work of the casings, dropping them in a railroad car to go to the Hot End to be melted down.

There was an office area, probably the foreman's offices, with World War II-era posters on the walls. I got in trouble for rummaging in one of the offices that was open. There were papers from 1946 in there, and stacks and stacks of old records. I suppose when the war ended, they just padlocked the building and walked away from it, never thinking that it would be thirty years before anyone would come back.

It struck me as strange that a building could sit there so long. It had an old creepy look and was way back from the huge main buildings, kind of between the rolling mills and pipe mills, closer to the river. There was a graveyard back there too, but it was behind a fence and padlocked, so I could never get at it.

In a week, all the bomb casings and old junk were gone, and water and power were turned on. The vintage posters remained on the walls and in the locker room, exhorting us to higher productivity for the war effort. Nobody thought it was that strange.

Tomorrow: More adventures at the steel mill – tunnels and layoffs

National Tube Entrance Then and Now

Several of my posts this week have all sprouted from my drive along Pearl Avenue last Saturday. So I  might as well end the week just as Pearl Avenue ends, at the gates to the steel mill.

Here is a vintage postcard looking north towards the gates that are well-known to so many Lorainites.

And here is my corresponding photograph from last Saturday.

It's not a perfect recreation of the postcard's camera angle, but it's fairly close – plus I did it from memory!

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In its heyday, the National Tube Company was one of the largest steel mills in the world, covering more than 1,440 acres. The mill was like a city with its own dock, power plant, water works, police department and fire department. It once employed about 12,000 people!

The plant has operated under several names, including the National Tube Company of U.S. Steel and the Lorain Cuyahoga Works of U.S. Steel. It became USS/KOBE in 1989.

In August 1999, Republic Technologies acquired the bar business. U.S. Steel continues to operate the seamless pipe portion of the mill as the Lorain Pipe Mills.

Most Lorainites have some connection with the steel plant; if they didn't work there themselves, some family member, friend or neighbor did.

I worked there one summer as a college student. It was a pretty fascinating way to spend the summer.

I had a pretty cushy job – in refrigeration! Which means that I was one of several college kids helping the guys who were troubleshooting, repairing and installing air conditioner units throughout the plant.

The days that we spent removing or installing air conditioners in offices were pretty fun. But when we had to go out into the steel mill and blow the dust out of these huge industrial fans – ugh. You and your 'green clothes' ended up covered with black dust. Climbing around in cranes high above everything, trying to remove a window unit wasn't much fun either.

I learned two things by the end of summer. One: the regular steel workers really earned their pay – and my respect. And two: I did not want to work in a steel mill.