My dad worked there from 1952 to 1991. He worked in 2 machine shop and later in 8 machine shop as lead car blocker. In the 70’s we would pick him up after work. It was amazing how many people worked there. I was lucky enough to have toured some of the plant with him. He would be sad if he would see it now. All that is left is the memories of all who worked in that great plant.
My dad worked there from 1966 until it closed in 97 or 98 although he stayed on in the Lehigh Heavy Forge part that was bought by Whemco? He stayed on there until he retired in 2017. I never got to see the plant while it ran because I was too young to take the tour until they stopped giving tours but my mom went on it and was very impressed. I did go in the plant with him once when it was Lehigh Heavy Forge in 2000 or 2001 and it was so almost eerie with everything quiet and a herd of deer living in the space at the time. This just came to mind since I went to an event at the Steel Stacks recently and couldn't help going outside to walk around and stare at all of the blast furnaces and snap a lot of pictures.
I grew up in Lackawanna Where my dad and 6 of my uncles worked at Bethlehem Steel. My dad always told me to get a collage degree so I don't have to work at the steel plant. In the 1980's and 1990's I can't begin to tell you how many people wish it was still there. It was i hard dirty job, But it was work! God bless the men that worked there.
"get a college degree so you don't have to work at the plant". That's why they all closed and shipped to China. Good paying, honest, dirty work was looked down upon...
Ore is transferred between 4-5 different cars before it even makes it to the furnaces, no wonder it's gone. Just in time manufacturing and an improvement of value added time might have saved this place.
This is my home town. My grandfathers, great-grandfathers and uncles worked there. As a kid in the '70s, we thought the Steel would be forever. By the time I graduated high school in the '80s, most of the site was closed. I remember the "Think American, Buy American" rallies around the city. Everyone pointing fingers at cheap imported steel instead of looking in the mirror. German engineers from Krupp told them in the early '70s that they needed to upgrade to stay competitive but no one listened. They were too busy taking their 8 weeks of vacation. Each time I visit now, I try to avoid the South Side due to how painful the memories are.
I remember seeing a documentary about the steel girders made at this steel plant ,when they arrived at the building site in New York ,the steel girders were still warm due to the volume of steel girders required at any given time .The building was the Empire State skyscraper.
End of an era... I moved to Allentown in '98 and there was nothing but a brown shell being dismantled on this site. I felt like I missed the opportunity to see this legendary furnace in action. Thanks for filling me in donald Dunn!
Wow crazy seeing my grandpa's workplace. I am so grateful that this video exists. I always wondered what it was like there. He always was happy to share stories about what it was like. Now I can finnaly see some of it after 25 years. Thank you for the upload.
I spent a lot of time in Beth Steel for my old company. I was all over the plant and repaired a lot of equipment there and saw a lot of steel being made. The scale of everything was incredible. The area in Northern Indiana there lived off the mill too. Very sad to see it dormant.
My Grandfather was in charge of 600 men at the Bethlehem PA plant. He retired and moved to California. He was 74 when he died in 1964. I was 4 years old.
My first project as a brand new GE field engineer was at the Bethlehem PA plant back in the 90’s at the Combo Mill. The workers went out of their way to take me around the entire plant to see everything that was still in operation or was being dismantled as they knew it was all coming to an end. I was able to see places only those who worked were allowed and got up close to everything. It was unreal. The sheer size of equipment, the power, the heat, and the ever present danger. The enormous ladles turned horizontal with large blow torches firing away to keep the moisture out. Being feet away from the solid beams coming down from the roughing mill and then the water/oil mix dousing the solid beam as it passed through the first stand. They went out of their way to explain the operations and most importantly safety - proper PPE and keeping your head on a swivel. 4 month of real world education were an important learning / appreciation experience for the rest of my career as I went on to other plants US Steel Fairless, J&L Specialty, Nucor as well as overseas plants. Sadly all, but Nucor in AR plants I did time at are gone.
In my time we built other plants in other allied countries so getting steel to the US I don't see as an issue - we built those plants partially because its cheaper to import - same thing with textiles and other industries. It comes down to economics - if you want lower prices for stuff - then this is what happens - if you want to bring it all back then we all need to be prepared to pay more because of the wage / benefit increases for a US workforce etc.. Same deal with import tariffs. you can jack those up, but it still will cost you overall. The Union guys were very candid when we talked about the closing and the demise of US steel dominance in the world. They admitted they were just as much at fault as the executives.. everyone was after their own interests and were not seeing the big picture - they showed others how to do it and were arrogant about them never surpassing the US. Geopolitics / Economics is a tricky area - you can back yourself into a corner if you decide to just take the ball away and go home - you need to be playing chess and not checkers.. and a climate of he said / she said blame the other only empowers those outside who want to do you real harm.. who needs an army and tanks anymore when you can destabilize and get people to infight and take their eyes off the real threats to them with a simple facebook post.. @@superchuck3259
@@yopajo there is also the huge cost of environmental rules which only get harder. especially in making coke for the furnaces. tonawanda coke got shut down because of epa issues a few years ago. and electric arc furnaces process scrap steel not iron ore.
in the mid-90's a bunch of us used to drive to the abandoned Bethlehem Steel plant and trespass around with cameras. It was beautiful and SO HUGE. These installations seemed to go on for miles.
@Dave Smith I just took a bunch of black and white photos that were a lot of fun. Yes, there were mini camcorders at that point, those started in the late 80's I think. I never bothered with one for this stuff.
These steel mills played a huge roll in WW2. Our manufacturing might back then was extremely important to the war effort. Allowing other countries ( China) to surpass us in manufacturing might, could contribute to our downfall, especially during a time of war.
Putting it that way, outsourcing is extremely short sighted. But corporations aren't responsible for keeping mfg capabilities available for an event that might never come. In short, like many things do, it comes down to money. Not to mention the loss of all the jobs.
these jobs also sucked, we’re hazardous, didn’t pay well. it’s best that we don’t do them. It sucks that someone else still has to do it honestly. We get much cheaper steel elsewhere so it’s a complete efficiency and specialization waste to make it here.
@@Dutcheh the problem is in time of war or global emergency, other countries will cut off supply of raw materials and products instantly. As seen with masks early on with cov.
The mill I worked at is gone too. It was in Utah, originally a WW2 defense plant, then USS, then locally owned. As an instrument tech, I rotated through all the departments. The blast furnaces were as impressive as any.
@@yourdadsdad Geneva Steel's 1,750 acres (7 km2) of land were sold in November 2005 for $46.8 million to Anderson Geneva, a sister company to Anderson Development, which plans to reuse the land for a wide range of purposes, including the FrontRunner commuter rail corridor.[8] The land must undergo environmental cleanups before any development can occur, with most of the cost paid for by U.S. Steel.[8] The mill equipment will not remain because it has been sold for $40 million to the Chinese firm Qingdao Iron & Steel Group.
I'm from Pittsburgh and the only blast furnaces that are left in Pittsburgh are the Edgar Thompson plant in Braddock, Pa...still making steel since 1875
I have a friend that is now in Texas that worked there when he got out of machinist school, Joe Pie. He has many great memories and stories of working there. Thanks for this Donald. I worked big as a machinist for 40 years. I really miss working big.
Ore comes in on railcar, gets dumped into a different railcar, then gets picked up by a crane to sit in a yard. Then the crane picks it back up and puts it in a rail car, then its dumped into another car underneath it....Jesus, its a wonder they stayed in business as long as they did.
I'm betting when these mills first opened they were a lot smaller and made a lot more sense but as time goes on more and more is added and it becomes a mess. I work for Hershey foods and the building Milton Hershey started in was no exception. It was "completed" in 1905 but construction rarely stopped until it was closed in 2012. In total 25 buildings were constructed and not one operation was streamlined.
As someone already said, that most likely comes from the fact that the plant being well over 100 years old. Back in the day, you just built something anywhere you could and you got the job done because it was the only job around. It's funny. As crude as things were built back then, somehow they were built to endure and last. The same buildings and machinery just cranked on for decade after decade. They may not be very pretty and efficient, but when you build something that lasts 100 years versus new things that last less than half as long it kinda makes you wonder. If you had to build a new foundry like the one in the video, it'd probably cost you 1 billion. I have heard that there is basically only one company who produces paperclips in the USA. The same machines are used that they were using when paperclips were first invented. They run 24/7 and when one breaks down, it gets fixed. They don't replace it. Also, as another person said, when dealing with the Unions, it virtually impossible to get anything done. If you ask a union member to use a new different kind of shovel instead of the one that has been used for the past 25 years, it takes an act of congress to get it done. So most companies don't even try to change anything when dealing with a union. This is why it took almost 13 years to build the One World Trade tower and it took only 13 months for them to build the Empire State building back during the Great Depression.
These kind of operations are not ran by 5s people. They're the kind that have inherited a business and have no passion for it. It is just a value stream until runs out of growth.
My father, John Koetteritz, worked in the blast furnace operation as a combustion engineer for 35 years, from early 1940s to late 1970s. My sister Toni, brother Eric & myself worked at BSC during early 1970s summers earning tuition. Great memories working there!
Very informative video! Bethlehem Steel was a great company with great American people working there! I have been to PA many times and the people are really nice and hard working. We need to rebuild our steel industry!!!!
In the spirit of Wealth of Nations I agree with the invisible hand of the market. But I disagree when a government gets involved in skewing the market. That's the problem we have. It's not free market. It's a mess.
The unions killed this Company plain and simple. When they went under, a British company offered to come in and modernize the mill and keep it open with a renegotiation of the labor contracts, and the union laughed at them. Now it’s a casino. The end.
Beth steel Made America Great! Thank you to all the people that worked there and risk their lives daily to help build this great nation.... Lets hope it stays great.
I can't remember if it was Bethlehem steel but a youtube channel called "The Proper People" went into places like this after they were abandoned. Think anyone watches this will definately enjoy those videos.
I have been inside the containment of a nuclear reactor but I was more nervous watching a furnace being tapped at a J&L mill many years ago. Sad that we have lost so much of our primary steel production capabilities.
The real energy use is in the melting. The trains and the skip use power but making coke is real energy intensive. The place was a maze of pumps and motors to keep the furnace from melting.
Great comment - I was thinking the same thing when the first half of the video was literally all about lifting and dumping from one place to the next. LOL.
It is a real shame it has come to an end, very glad to see they are preserving it all for generations to come and see how times used to be. What a remarkable place of employment
Good video, thanks for uploading. Filmed in 1995, closed in 2003. One of the ore bridges now stands over the entrance to a gambling casino they built there. The blast furnaces were bathed in red light at night last time I was up there, a reminder of their glory days. When I was a kid, back around 1970, we use to watch the ore trains pass through our town on the Reading Railroad. There'd usually be four good sized, green & yellow diesel locomotives hauling 100 or so cars through the middle of town. And they'd be moving too, I'd say 40 or 50 MPH. Two tracks, northbound towards Bethlehem, and a southbound towards Philadelphia. It was an everyday occurrence, multiple times a day. The ore trains would rumble north and the empties would rattle & clack south. Nowadays they've torn up one of the two rails north of us and it's only an occasional, small, slow moving mixed freight on those rails (although there is a fair bit of commuter train traffic to the south). It's hard to believe those behemoth trains use to roar through our town.
This whole operation was obsolete from the 1960's. The mills in Japan and Europe were more energy efficient and less labor intensive. The death knell was reunification of Germany. This opened up coal from Eastern Germany and Poland for European markets. The coal is suck high quality, they were able to make iron without the coking process.
You're right... after WWII Japanese and much European steel mill and machining capacity was wrecked. So the US loaned them money or outright paid for them to rebuild with NEW and EFFICIENT capacity while US producers continued to use worn-out and inefficient pre-war processes and plants. Plus US union work rules made efficiency improvements very expensive and sometimes impossible.
@@farmalmta The German and Japanese Tax laws make it advantageous to invest in Big Capital items, like Updating or Modernizing your Blast Furness. You'd be hard pressed to find a Blast Furnace in either Germany or Japan that is over 20 or 30 years old. And Germany had industrial and trade groups that, unlike here, do not waste money on "Lobbying", but do solid research and development that is shared amongst members. They found out in the 1970's that to beat the low coast places like Italy then or China today, they had to be on the edge of efficiency and productivity. And the US Marshall plan did not rebuild any private companies, it was used to rebuild infrastructure and stabilize the economy. (Unless you're France, then you use it to fight the French Indochina War)
Obsolete from the 1920s. Steelmaking from iron ore has changed as has the need to make steel from ore itself. Strip mills, EAF and other processes using recycled metal have significantly reduced the need for blast-furnace iron production, the labor costs and production inefficiencies of blast furnace production aside.
Looks like a hellish environment to work in. Used to drive truck past this plant around the time it shut down. Looked like a metal monster out of a nightmare.
As a boy, in southern Ontario I used to pick up thousands of iron ore pellets littering the tracks. As slingshot ammunition, accept no substitute! (Assuming you need something heavily broken, or dead) I don't live there anymore, but when I do visit, all the refuse on the tracks is mostly small bits of coal instead.
Same here, slingshot ammo. Grew up on Lake Erie about 20 miles south of Bethlehem Steel Lackawanna plant. Picked up tons of iron ore pellets along the tracks.
Same here lol i rem using those pellets exactly how you did. I Lived in Hamilton as a kid so i had more of that crap then you could imagine . It was everywhere here, that and slag etc etc .
@@MicrophonicFool yup, no doubt they were . I used to live near a switching area where they would change cars over to head down to the mills, i was able to get al kinds of goodies if you will ...and take Train rides to Niagara and back. We werent all helmet wearing, 'hot"warnings on coffee and everyone is a winner generation.. Danger pfffft ...Hold My drink ...thats how we rolled .Cheers
Great Video! I was watching videos about Sloss Furnaces in my hometown Birmingham AL. This came up in my feed. It was so cool to see this because it looks alot lot Sloss but bigger. And Sloss made pig iron. Sloss opened in 1881, closed in 1971 and was declared a NHL and museum in 1981. I remember going there on a grade school field trip in the late 80's. In the mid 90's they converted one of the casting sheds in a stage for concerts and theatre with a 3000 head capacity. In Oct 98 Sloss Fright Furnace was born. The largest haunted attraction in the state. The trail was only 1/2 mile. I started scaring people there in 2001 and my last October at SFF was 2011. The trail was 1½ miles long and had 2 sub trail off site. SFF operated every October from 1998-2019 and had millions of patrons. Covid shuddered SFF for good. But Sloss lives on 50+ years after the furnaces went cold. There's a annual 3 day Brewfest there every summer that attracts thousands, concerts, weddings and other events. Sloss is open to the public after being closed for a 1.5 years due to Covid. Aw shucks. I'm getting all nostalgic about my home. As they use say at Sloss. Blood, Sweat, Ore and Coal. Forever the Furnace owns my Soul. Roll Tide!
Incredible. Hard working Men, but even then in the 90's you could see the inefficiencies. What a shame places like this disappear for workers that all say 'Hallo my name's ..... how may I help you'.
Having grown up in South Bethlehem, that red dust was all over the houses and cars. When they dumped the slag near Saucon Park, the sky would glow the overcast sky red.
I visited BSC's plant at Sparrow's Point, Baltimore in the 70s and the operation there seemed a lot slicker. Still a shame that people who worked there lost their jobs so that financial hot-shots could get richer using Chinese imports.
Wasn't Sparrows Point the largest production mill in the states ? We had cranes there for their last shutdown before the final closing If you've never seen steel production, it's truly an amazing process . The last of "Smokestack America" 🇺🇸 Without Bethlehem and Sparrows Point, there would be no America as we know it.
@@joebonola7458 I've been to other steel works (including my former home city- Cardiff, Wales), seen and felt the heat of the processes and how hard the guys worked. One of the foremen kindly gave me an unofficial tour of Sparrows Point and it was, as you said, amazing. I hate to see industry like that abandoned- It like seeing the heart ripped out of the country.
That’s true to some extent, but don’t forget the role of the epa in this. The regulation is what really killed industry-and deregulation is what is making it possible now.
In 2000 and 2001, I was a truck driver delivering refractory brick from Michigan to the steel mill. The brick was used to line the giant ladles in an area of the mill no longer used. I asked them what the point of this was since the plant was shut down. A supervisor said "It gives them something to do". I wish I had taken pictures of the place. It was a giant ghost town with maybe a dozen union workers in total. I drove my tractor trailer inside the building near these giant ladles. There was a supervisor hut in the middle of the building with the lights on inside. Was like a little house in the middle of this huge factory. I go inside to find the forklift operator, and they were all sitting in there playing cards and drinking coffee. The factory didn't look like it had been operated in years. Windows busted out everywhere, no lights on inside except for that little hut. I asked him if I could go up on the catwalk to watch them lay the refractory brick, "yeah, no problem". I get up there, probably 4 stories high, and look down into one of the ladles. There were two guys actually laying brick, and about 5 guys standing around doing nothing. I've been to a few steel mills including Nucor, but never witnessed anything this weird. Nucor was bustling and alive, Beth was dead as a door nail.
About 75 % of New York Cities skyline came through this plant, not to mention the Golden Gate Bridge....35,000 men worked in or on the property in Southside Bethlehem during World War 2, when only 60,000 people lived in the entire City...
I was a dispatcher and one night they had a slag explosion that shook me about 3 miles away. Suddenly my phone lines lit up like a Christmas tree, every line. Homes were literally moved on their foundations and windows broke all over the place from the explosion. I took over 100 calls for damage in less than an hour. We were on the opposite side of the river from the slag pit and apparently someone wasn't watching and dumped slag into a large puddle of water causing an explosion. It was a rough evening as we only had one dispatcher on duty then and had to answer phones and radio traffic simultaneously. I wasn't too happy with Bethlehem Steel that night. I worked my butt off.
I spent my early years in the shadow of a small foundry in northern NJ (American Brake Shoe) where my grandfather worked, and also within view of a major Ford Motor Company manufacturing plant. The smell of the coke ovens early on a crisp winter morning while enduring the Watergate saga on the black and white TV is burned into my memory, and still brings back fond memories whenever I pass by a steel mill that has coke ovens in operation. I will never forget the coke oven smell, nor the sound of the steam whistle at the start of shift, lunch break, and end of shift. I now live an hour north of the former Bethlehem Steel site. It's sad how the steel industry has died off in the US.
My hometown of Buffalo (Lackawanna) had an enormous Bethlehem Steel plant there, 1000+ acres site. Closed in the 1980’s, causing Buffalo to slump economically for an entire generation. Finally making a comeback now, and the old brownfield site is slowly being cleaned up by section for light industrial reuse.
I hauled coils out of there from 1990 to 1994, all automotive grade, republic steel runs the bar mill , and the galvanized finish mill is now a scrap shredder run by metalico, all in lackawanna ny
I worked in the hot end of the last fully integrated steel mill west of the Mississippi river. It operated just like in this video. My mill was torn down and the good parts were sent to China.
Driving through the back road a long the blast furnace area behind the casino especially at night or walking around there's such an eerie feeling, walking the walkway they built along the furnace further explains the process, you can stand there and imagine whatver was like when it was all operational, the sound must have been deafening, where I live in NJ we had a steel plant actually at one time we had a couple but the last one to close you could hear it especially at night, a lot of creaking and banging.
Unfortunately, these old steel companies didn’t keep up with technological change. They couldn’t compete withe new blast furnaces and continuous casters refined by the Japanese and Germans and the U.S. Government didn’t really support innovation
Unions were probably the worst.... Organization making money off the back of workers taking away rights to negotiate for ones self, what a stupid concept.
Very interesting. I grew up in Bethlehem and had the pleasure of taking a tour through the mill once. Was awed by the BOF and the I beam mill. Sad that a once great industrial giant is now a casino. Although I must say, the city itself looks good. Visited most recently in July of 2020.
My grandparents lived on Route 5 in Buffalo NY directly across the street from Bethlehem Steel plant. Oh the smell! My father was a metallurgical engineer who started out at Bethlehem Steel Plant in Buffalo and then moved to Raritan River Steel in New Jersey.
Back in -88 I was posted at a coastal artillery fort in Russaro island, Finland. Two massive cannons next to the barracks, tucked away in vaseline. Betlehem Steel Company. They had a duel with russian cruiser Kirov the second day of winter war, 1939. Managed to make a good dent in Kirov, limped away after.
I was helping tear out windows of an old round top building the other day, it had Bethlehem steel trusses in it, I wish I had the funds and equipment to pull them...
The astoundingly inefficient material handling process reflects the well known failure of Bethlehem Steel to innovate and update to compete with the more modern foreign plants, focusing instead on short term corporate profits instead of a long term jobs.
So true. The output of the furnace may have been great steel, but this has to be the most inefficient bulk material handling ever patchwork quilted together.
@@neilpuckett359 was it that or did the unions refuse to agree on the basis that many jobs would have been lost in making those improvements? Legit question as I am not from the USA.
During Christmas of 1977 the rail servicing company that I was working for shutdown operation for the holiday and sent the crew home. They needed two people to stay with the train, so I and a fellow employee agreed to stay. The unit was tied up close to the mill and to get to the stores, etc. we had to walk next to all of the mill operations. Even to this day I remember the people, sounds, smells, and the constant motion. It was the best two weeks of my life! We worked on railroads all over North America, but my stay in Bethlehem will always be my favorite. And now it's all gone!
I went there and to Sparrows Point on audits back in 1980 (the company I worked for used quite a bit of Bethlehem steel plate). Even back then they were getting a lot of foreign competition with countries dumping steel onto our market. It is sad that today most of our heavy steel manufacturing capability is gone. Heavy fabrication of forgings and castings is being done overseas. I have seen the downturn of many towns from losing their manufacturing base to overseas competition. We have become a “service economy” where min wage jobs are plentiful.
@@1940limited I have a huge amount of respect for anyone that ran a larry car back then. One of the nastiest jobs I have ever seen. The one worse I saw was the lid man that opened and closed the holes you fed the coal into.
@@tomhoward1996 I had a magnetic device that did that as part of the charge car, but a separate man then poured sealer all around the cracks after the lids were installed. It was a really neat place and a great experience for a 23 year guy. Thanks for the comment.
I lived in Orem, UT in the early 1990s during the last days of the Geneva Steel plant. The owners struggled to keep the WW II era plant going but in the end were unsuccessful. The plant is now gone. Although the mill was not pretty to look at, it provided good paying jobs that did not require a college degree. i think those that worked there had more pride in their work than in what replaced them in our modern economy, i.e. stocking supermarket shelves.
My dad's side of the family worked in Bethlehem, namely him, his dad, and my uncle. Dad worked there until its closure, then we moved to the United Kingdom...
The Bethlehem site built our bridges, our battleships and our machine tools. Now the Bethlehem site has a casino and "outlet" stores selling us cheap Chinese-made clothing and other Chinajunk. Bethlehem could have modernized, but their pension and benefit costs were killing them, thanks to lucrative union contracts. My father and my uncles worked at the Conemaugh rail car furnaces & foundry; they made a ton of money in the 50's & 60's, but their pensions disappeared after Bethlehem died.
Even steel is now imported from foreign countries. My late father worked at the Bethlehem plant from the late 60's to March 7, 1986, his life ended on March 8, 1986 at night when a drunk lady hit him when he was walking across the street 2 miles from our house. My mom passed away on June 14 this year in the hospital. Her breath gave out.
Huh. Didn't know we were supplying Bethlehem! The furnace shut down before I joined, but the limestone operation was just as old as the steel plant. Used to supply Lebanon and Sparrows, as well. Near the end, the shunt engine that we used could barely make it up a half-percent grade. Did you know a 172H Caterpillar wheel loader will push a full-sized diesel locomotive engine? For about 50 feet. Wide-open throttle, all the way. Then, you have to stop and let the temperature gauge come back down.
I remember driving by those furnaces as a trucker in the late seventies. The first time I saw them it was awe inspiring as I marveled at their size. American industry and government have combined to destroy an entire region of this country’s heartland. A sad testament to the power of greed and of activism. Countless millions have suffered because of these actions.
My grandfather worked and retired for bethlehem steel in bethlehem.. my family is from and still lives in the area, it's a shame it turned into a casino and music stage and business center and eating places .
Brings back memories. That would be the summer between my freshman and sophomore years at Lehigh up the street. Believe it or not, that operation was just a shell of what it had been even 6 years before.
My Grandfather(PapPap) operated the cranes there! You could see them going over the Minsi Trail Bridge! I would ride in the back seat of the '57 Chevy with Nana to pickup PapPap after work! I asked Nana one day..."why do you take PapPap to work and pick him up"? She told me ...years later... "so he wouldn't spend all our money at Tchaikowsky's Tavern"!!! Years later...when I was 16...I used to go to what we called "Chicks" Tavern(Tchaikowsky's) and tell the owner who I was... and he would sell me a couple of six packs of Schmidts!!! The tears of memories are rolling down my face as I write this...
I have driven past that plant 100s of times, if not more, I remember looking out the window of my moms Jeep when I was a kid in total awe of the size and scope of the works, we need that great American manufacturing back
Unfortunately those days are behind us as we dismantle the engine of wealth generation that built not only this nation but much of the world, and sell the parts for scrap.
My gosh that was an inefficient as hell operation. I wondered around what's left of the steel plant last summer. The buildings are all gone, except for the blast furnaces which are lit up at night. You can now walk the elevated train track right up against the blast furnaces. The train cars are still there they just parked them and walked away. The iron dump pit is now flat and its where the casino is built; however the casino is just a tiny portion of the former pit. The casino is the size of a grain of rice in the dump pit. In 1995 the plant closed and the employees just walked away. What is left in place is frozen in time.
Worked at NLMK in Portage IN, two EMF's and a continued slab pouring caster. Seen my fair share of men killed and almost killed, mostly not following safety protocols. A 12 hour turn there you'll find out who the real men we're.
@@Shnick Free to stay. I'm not a good little brainwashed nazi but that isn't a requirement to live here. I'm free to burn the flag and hate the government and the countries abominations all I want.
@@funny3scene If you knew anything about me you would know far better than to label me that, it's ok though I understand that was the best you could do. Thanks for the laugh.
I worked on a rolling mill plant in Bahrain in 1996. All the machinery came from Philaadelphia. The whole plant was removed and set up in an industrial area outside Manama, Bahrain. Everything was marked " made in USA. " A sign of great quality. Our politicians must remember they have four years to the next election. Each council must work to reflect the interests of the local unemployed. New iobs, housing,......
I worked on the Schenectady built General Electric gas turbines at Bapco in Bahrain in 1979. I stayed in Awali, swam in the old rock version of the Al Adari pool, cruised the abandoned airstrip on Fridays, shopped at the Sook in Manama. I will bet the place changed by the time you got there.
really hard to believe how antiquated all of the technology looks, amazing that they were still competitive in 1995. not surprising they went out of business
One of the guys diagonally across from my grandmother’s old house use to work at the shipyard in sparrow’s point. Although I personally never saw the place and was like 8 years old or so when it shut down, I still thing it’s a shame that they tore down the infamous (at least around here) “L” furnace. They did save the star of David that sat on top of it. I’m sure the developers who bought the land could have worked around the L furnace, I know I would have if I were them.
Great video. It confirms I DID grow up in the good ole' days. graduated high school in 1996. I think the people that were old when I was young were right...........and lucky to have lived their life in better times.
One fact which has always fascinated (or perhaps terrified) me is this: Almost every single atom of naturally-occurring Iron in the Universe was formed in the core of a star which was moments later to explode. While all heavy elements are naturally formed through the supernova process, Iron represents the moment the star's death is inevitable; fusion thereafter cannot produce sufficient heat to pause the gravitational collapse.
My dad worked there from 1952 to 1991. He worked in 2 machine shop and later in 8 machine shop as lead car blocker. In the 70’s we would pick him up after work. It was amazing how many people worked there. I was lucky enough to have toured some of the plant with him. He would be sad if he would see it now. All that is left is the memories of all who worked in that great plant.
My dad worked there from 1966 until it closed in 97 or 98 although he stayed on in the Lehigh Heavy Forge part that was bought by Whemco? He stayed on there until he retired in 2017. I never got to see the plant while it ran because I was too young to take the tour until they stopped giving tours but my mom went on it and was very impressed. I did go in the plant with him once when it was Lehigh Heavy Forge in 2000 or 2001 and it was so almost eerie with everything quiet and a herd of deer living in the space at the time. This just came to mind since I went to an event at the Steel Stacks recently and couldn't help going outside to walk around and stare at all of the blast furnaces and snap a lot of pictures.
I grew up in Lackawanna Where my dad and 6 of my uncles worked at Bethlehem Steel. My dad always told me to get a collage degree so I don't have to work at the steel plant. In the 1980's and 1990's I can't begin to tell you how many people wish it was still there. It was i hard dirty job, But it was work! God bless the men that worked there.
"get a college degree so you don't have to work at the plant". That's why they all closed and shipped to China.
Good paying, honest, dirty work was looked down upon...
@@danielmartin531 I do have a college degree a masters .I put my time in and was quite successful , I even retired at 58.
You are the lucky one. College degree jobs would not be available soon. Why didn’t you think they don’t export such jobs to China & other places?
Some of the finest steel in the world was made here! What a shame it’s gone.
I'm from the Lehigh Valley, its sad to see it all gone, falling down, or filled with a casino.
Have relatives who worked their whole working career at that plant.
Project Recycle Bethlehem. Value in the property. Owners must have some plan for area? If not let us scrappers at it.
No wonder it's gone. WWII technology
Ore is transferred between 4-5 different cars before it even makes it to the furnaces, no wonder it's gone. Just in time manufacturing and an improvement of value added time might have saved this place.
This is my home town. My grandfathers, great-grandfathers and uncles worked there. As a kid in the '70s, we thought the Steel would be forever. By the time I graduated high school in the '80s, most of the site was closed. I remember the "Think American, Buy American" rallies around the city. Everyone pointing fingers at cheap imported steel instead of looking in the mirror. German engineers from Krupp told them in the early '70s that they needed to upgrade to stay competitive but no one listened. They were too busy taking their 8 weeks of vacation. Each time I visit now, I try to avoid the South Side due to how painful the memories are.
right on bud. do now think later. my pa never gave me the 5 bucks i bet that itd be down by the time i left for canada.
I remember seeing a documentary about the steel girders made at this steel plant ,when they arrived at the building site in New York ,the steel girders were still warm due to the volume of steel girders required at any given time .The building was the Empire State skyscraper.
The second he said The blast furnace I looked at my mother in laws mouth.
Lol
OOF
@Stella Hohenheim - bit touchy luv .... I wonder why???
I'm sure it's equally as...radiating. haha
@Stella Hohenheim have you served your time as a blast furnace? 😂🤣
End of an era... I moved to Allentown in '98 and there was nothing but a brown shell being dismantled on this site. I felt like I missed the opportunity to see this legendary furnace in action. Thanks for filling me in donald Dunn!
The smell of the coke ovens was the best. It is a shame that you missed out.
Wow crazy seeing my grandpa's workplace. I am so grateful that this video exists. I always wondered what it was like there. He always was happy to share stories about what it was like. Now I can finnaly see some of it after 25 years. Thank you for the upload.
I spent a lot of time in Beth Steel for my old company. I was all over the plant and repaired a lot of equipment there and saw a lot of steel being made. The scale of everything was incredible. The area in Northern Indiana there lived off the mill too. Very sad to see it dormant.
Back in the 80s I was lucky to have a tour of the plat a few times through a lady I knew in the PR department. It was mind boggling.
Too Bad our Big Greedy Companies sold our country down the river to China
@@bradhardy2629 Along with our government and unions too.
@@timjohnson1199 My grampa worked at a couple steel Mills, they were in Indiana also. He was at one of them for 30 years. Different times back then.
scale was huge because built by giants. Not us
My Grandfather was in charge of 600 men at the Bethlehem PA plant. He retired and moved to California. He was 74 when he died in 1964. I was 4 years old.
Wow.
Poor soul. Living in California.
Jason back then Cali wasn't as much of a shithole. Yes, such a time actually existed.
Man how cool is that. I bet he liked pickles
What a life you must have lived
My first project as a brand new GE field engineer was at the Bethlehem PA plant back in the 90’s at the Combo Mill. The workers went out of their way to take me around the entire plant to see everything that was still in operation or was being dismantled as they knew it was all coming to an end. I was able to see places only those who worked were allowed and got up close to everything. It was unreal. The sheer size of equipment, the power, the heat, and the ever present danger. The enormous ladles turned horizontal with large blow torches firing away to keep the moisture out. Being feet away from the solid beams coming down from the roughing mill and then the water/oil mix dousing the solid beam as it passed through the first stand. They went out of their way to explain the operations and most importantly safety - proper PPE and keeping your head on a swivel. 4 month of real world education were an important learning / appreciation experience for the rest of my career as I went on to other plants US Steel Fairless, J&L Specialty, Nucor as well as overseas plants. Sadly all, but Nucor in AR plants I did time at are gone.
How can the USA fight any war without ability to create its own steel?
In my time we built other plants in other allied countries so getting steel to the US I don't see as an issue - we built those plants partially because its cheaper to import - same thing with textiles and other industries. It comes down to economics - if you want lower prices for stuff - then this is what happens - if you want to bring it all back then we all need to be prepared to pay more because of the wage / benefit increases for a US workforce etc.. Same deal with import tariffs. you can jack those up, but it still will cost you overall. The Union guys were very candid when we talked about the closing and the demise of US steel dominance in the world. They admitted they were just as much at fault as the executives.. everyone was after their own interests and were not seeing the big picture - they showed others how to do it and were arrogant about them never surpassing the US. Geopolitics / Economics is a tricky area - you can back yourself into a corner if you decide to just take the ball away and go home - you need to be playing chess and not checkers.. and a climate of he said / she said blame the other only empowers those outside who want to do you real harm.. who needs an army and tanks anymore when you can destabilize and get people to infight and take their eyes off the real threats to them with a simple facebook post.. @@superchuck3259
@@yopajo there is also the huge cost of environmental rules which only get harder. especially in making coke for the furnaces. tonawanda coke got shut down because of epa issues a few years ago. and electric arc furnaces process scrap steel not iron ore.
in the mid-90's a bunch of us used to drive to the abandoned Bethlehem Steel plant and trespass around with cameras. It was beautiful and SO HUGE. These installations seemed to go on for miles.
always wanted to go in there, now with the casino right next door that is a high risk proposition.
@Dave Smith I just took a bunch of black and white photos that were a lot of fun. Yes, there were mini camcorders at that point, those started in the late 80's I think. I never bothered with one for this stuff.
These steel mills played a huge roll in WW2. Our manufacturing might back then was extremely important to the war effort. Allowing other countries ( China) to surpass us in manufacturing might, could contribute to our downfall, especially during a time of war.
Putting it that way, outsourcing is extremely short sighted. But corporations aren't responsible for keeping mfg capabilities available for an event that might never come. In short, like many things do, it comes down to money. Not to mention the loss of all the jobs.
@@ctdieselnut sad but true
these jobs also sucked, we’re hazardous, didn’t pay well. it’s best that we don’t do them. It sucks that someone else still has to do it honestly. We get much cheaper steel elsewhere so it’s a complete efficiency and specialization waste to make it here.
@@Dutcheh I'm sure they paid way better than the food service industry.
@@Dutcheh the problem is in time of war or global emergency, other countries will cut off supply of raw materials and products instantly. As seen with masks early on with cov.
I used to roll steel beams at the 48. Fun, but grueling. Many accidental deaths. Everything is either heavy or hot.
Is there stuff that's both hot and heavy?
@@secondlayer7898 That's normally the case
Sounds like a trip to yoga class the ladies either hot or heavy ain’t nothin in between
@@secondlayer7898 yeah my wife
What are some ways people died?
All those people . Back in those times that worked hard thank you for your hard work
How fascinating. What a splendid voiceover, like from the 1950s when radio announcers wore bow ties.
Even dogs and monkeys wire them. It was a universal object placed upib The person you wabred to elevate.
Yeah, no schoolyard uptalk either.
don’t listen to those stupid farts
i know what you mean
earlier radio speakers had fantastic clear articulation
and better equipment 🍾
The sound of smoking a pack a day
The mill I worked at is gone too. It was in Utah, originally a WW2 defense plant, then USS, then locally owned. As an instrument tech, I rotated through all the departments. The blast furnaces were as impressive as any.
Oh really? Where in Utah? I’m located in the northern Wasatch front. I find this stuff pretty fascinating.
@@yourdadsdad Geneva Steel's 1,750 acres (7 km2) of land were sold in November 2005 for $46.8 million to Anderson Geneva, a sister company to Anderson Development, which plans to reuse the land for a wide range of purposes, including the FrontRunner commuter rail corridor.[8] The land must undergo environmental cleanups before any development can occur, with most of the cost paid for by U.S. Steel.[8] The mill equipment will not remain because it has been sold for $40 million to the Chinese firm Qingdao Iron & Steel Group.
Weird to think this place was still going in my lifetime. What an amazing place. Wish it was still running
I'm from Pittsburgh and the only blast furnaces that are left in Pittsburgh are the Edgar Thompson plant in Braddock, Pa...still making steel since 1875
I heard it's likely to close down in a couple years.
Lots of nostalgic when I see that...the good old days!but thanks for sharing it 👍
A lot of old equipment.
1:56 when my boss comes by at work and im tryin to look busy
dude is holding the operation together
He pulled that car all the way there lol
I have a friend that is now in Texas that worked there when he got out of machinist school, Joe Pie. He has many great memories and stories of working there. Thanks for this Donald. I worked big as a machinist for 40 years. I really miss working big.
Ore comes in on railcar, gets dumped into a different railcar, then gets picked up by a crane to sit in a yard. Then the crane picks it back up and puts it in a rail car, then its dumped into another car underneath it....Jesus, its a wonder they stayed in business as long as they did.
I'm betting when these mills first opened they were a lot smaller and made a lot more sense but as time goes on more and more is added and it becomes a mess. I work for Hershey foods and the building Milton Hershey started in was no exception. It was "completed" in 1905 but construction rarely stopped until it was closed in 2012. In total 25 buildings were constructed and not one operation was streamlined.
Blame the labor unions for "making jobs."
As someone already said, that most likely comes from the fact that the plant being well over 100 years old. Back in the day, you just built something anywhere you could and you got the job done because it was the only job around.
It's funny. As crude as things were built back then, somehow they were built to endure and last. The same buildings and machinery just cranked on for decade after decade. They may not be very pretty and efficient, but when you build something that lasts 100 years versus new things that last less than half as long it kinda makes you wonder. If you had to build a new foundry like the one in the video, it'd probably cost you 1 billion.
I have heard that there is basically only one company who produces paperclips in the USA. The same machines are used that they were using when paperclips were first invented. They run 24/7 and when one breaks down, it gets fixed. They don't replace it.
Also, as another person said, when dealing with the Unions, it virtually impossible to get anything done. If you ask a union member to use a new different kind of shovel instead of the one that has been used for the past 25 years, it takes an act of congress to get it done. So most companies don't even try to change anything when dealing with a union. This is why it took almost 13 years to build the One World Trade tower and it took only 13 months for them to build the Empire State building back during the Great Depression.
@@karozans garanteed wage,benefits, pension,still a rarity these days,I've never seen anymore get away with not taking there share of work,
These kind of operations are not ran by 5s people. They're the kind that have inherited a business and have no passion for it. It is just a value stream until runs out of growth.
Super proud to have been a fitter… & an association with steel/ production…
Engineering has an amazing legacy..🙏🙏🙏🙏
here here. I would love to work for a company like this
My father, John Koetteritz, worked in the blast furnace operation as a combustion engineer for 35 years, from early 1940s to late 1970s. My sister Toni, brother Eric & myself worked at BSC during early 1970s summers earning tuition. Great memories working there!
Very informative video! Bethlehem Steel was a great company with great American people working there! I have been to PA many times and the people are really nice and hard working. We need to rebuild our steel industry!!!!
We need to rebuild everything
Red tape, regulations, high cost of labor and materials ....literally not happening.
Trump promised to! Didn’t he do it?
@@billpugh58
re: "Trump promised to! Didn’t he do it?"
DON'T go there - unless you want to discuss Potato's inability to 'carry on' ...
@@billpugh58 trump said so many thing
Those were the jobs that gave us a middle class. All gone now because they were too dirty and labor was cheaper in Mexico or China or Bangladesh.
Hello from Bangladesh
Japanese steel
The powers that be captured more power by going overseas with steelmaking. That's who is really important in this nation now.
In the spirit of Wealth of Nations I agree with the invisible hand of the market. But I disagree when a government gets involved in skewing the market. That's the problem we have. It's not free market. It's a mess.
The unions killed this Company plain and simple. When they went under, a British company offered to come in and modernize the mill and keep it open with a renegotiation of the labor contracts, and the union laughed at them. Now it’s a casino. The end.
I’m proud of of those guys and could only wish to be like them. They helped build the USA 🇺🇸
Just in time for their bosses to steal their pensions and ship their jobs to China!
be glad you didn't have to breath in all that dust. yuck
Karl Marx socialists want a free ride on the backs of the hard workers! Selfish bastards suck.
@@sparklesparklesparkle6318 you a thinned skinned socialist bastard!!Go to Cuba☆
@Clayton Mileto Wrong, u r a thinned skinned sorry socialist☆
Beth steel Made America Great! Thank you to all the people that worked there and risk their lives daily to help build this great nation.... Lets hope it stays great.
I can't remember if it was Bethlehem steel but a youtube channel called "The Proper People" went into places like this after they were abandoned. Think anyone watches this will definately enjoy those videos.
My dad, W.L. Arneson, worked for Bethlehem Steel in Los Angeles for 25+ years.
I have been inside the containment of a nuclear reactor but I was more nervous watching a furnace being tapped at a J&L mill many years ago. Sad that we have lost so much of our primary steel production capabilities.
nuclear reactors are incredibly safe
I never imagined that Bethlehem Steel would eventually go out of business. It had major influences in the ABE area and in the USA.
My Grandpa worked Republic Steel in Warren Ohio Rolling Mill in the 50s n 60s Loved listening to his stories
Half the energy required to make steel is in lifting it, dumping it, lifting it, dumping it, lifting it, dumping it....
The real energy use is in the melting. The trains and the skip use power but making coke is real energy intensive. The place was a maze of pumps and motors to keep the furnace from melting.
Great comment - I was thinking the same thing when the first half of the video was literally all about lifting and dumping from one place to the next. LOL.
The other half of the energy was used up entirely in the rolling mill. The pressure, I can't take the pressure...
It’s like when you understand nuclear power plants are just used to heat water and make steam.
ferro 99.9% reciclado
It is a real shame it has come to an end, very glad to see they are preserving it all for generations to come and see how times used to be. What a remarkable place of employment
Good video, thanks for uploading.
Filmed in 1995, closed in 2003. One of the ore bridges now stands over the entrance to a gambling casino they built there. The blast furnaces were bathed in red light at night last time I was up there, a reminder of their glory days.
When I was a kid, back around 1970, we use to watch the ore trains pass through our town on the Reading Railroad. There'd usually be four good sized, green & yellow diesel locomotives hauling 100 or so cars through the middle of town. And they'd be moving too, I'd say 40 or 50 MPH. Two tracks, northbound towards Bethlehem, and a southbound towards Philadelphia. It was an everyday occurrence, multiple times a day. The ore trains would rumble north and the empties would rattle & clack south. Nowadays they've torn up one of the two rails north of us and it's only an occasional, small, slow moving mixed freight on those rails (although there is a fair bit of commuter train traffic to the south). It's hard to believe those behemoth trains use to roar through our town.
It closed Nov 1995. Most buildings demolished 2004.
This whole operation was obsolete from the 1960's.
The mills in Japan and Europe were more energy efficient and less labor intensive.
The death knell was reunification of Germany. This opened up coal from Eastern Germany and Poland for European markets. The coal is suck high quality, they were able to make iron without the coking process.
I was wondering what "suck high quality" meant, until I read it like five times and realized it was just a typo lol.
You're right... after WWII Japanese and much European steel mill and machining capacity was wrecked. So the US loaned them money or outright paid for them to rebuild with NEW and EFFICIENT capacity while US producers continued to use worn-out and inefficient pre-war processes and plants. Plus US union work rules made efficiency improvements very expensive and sometimes impossible.
No, that's not true.
@@farmalmta The German and Japanese Tax laws make it advantageous to invest in Big Capital items, like Updating or Modernizing your Blast Furness.
You'd be hard pressed to find a Blast Furnace in either Germany or Japan that is over 20 or 30 years old.
And Germany had industrial and trade groups that, unlike here, do not waste money on "Lobbying", but do solid research and development that is shared amongst members.
They found out in the 1970's that to beat the low coast places like Italy then or China today, they had to be on the edge of efficiency and productivity.
And the US Marshall plan did not rebuild any private companies, it was used to rebuild infrastructure and stabilize the economy. (Unless you're France, then you use it to fight the French Indochina War)
Obsolete from the 1920s. Steelmaking from iron ore has changed as has the need to make steel from ore itself. Strip mills, EAF and other processes using recycled metal have significantly reduced the need for blast-furnace iron production, the labor costs and production inefficiencies of blast furnace production aside.
Looks like a hellish environment to work in. Used to drive truck past this plant around the time it shut down. Looked like a metal monster out of a nightmare.
Sounds like you should spend your life hiding in your closet with your emotional support butt plug.
@@johnlockesghost5592 Took you a whole year to reply. Does your brain hurt now? If it does, try pulling your head out of your ass.
And a few months after this video the last cast happened!! Wow! Unreal
As a boy, in southern Ontario I used to pick up thousands of iron ore pellets littering the tracks. As slingshot ammunition, accept no substitute! (Assuming you need something heavily broken, or dead) I don't live there anymore, but when I do visit, all the refuse on the tracks is mostly small bits of coal instead.
Same here, slingshot ammo. Grew up on Lake Erie about 20 miles south of Bethlehem Steel Lackawanna plant. Picked up tons of iron ore pellets along the tracks.
I live along lake erie i wish the trains still ran through here
Same here lol i rem using those pellets exactly how you did. I Lived in Hamilton as a kid so i had more of that crap then you could imagine . It was everywhere here, that and slag etc etc .
@@fetus2280 Ya, down where you where I can see being more slag than my area. These trains were probably heading your way for process into steel
@@MicrophonicFool yup, no doubt they were . I used to live near a switching area where they would change cars over to head down to the mills, i was able to get al kinds of goodies if you will ...and take Train rides to Niagara and back. We werent all helmet wearing, 'hot"warnings on coffee and everyone is a winner generation..
Danger pfffft ...Hold My drink ...thats how we rolled .Cheers
Great Video! I was watching videos about Sloss Furnaces in my hometown Birmingham AL. This came up in my feed. It was so cool to see this because it looks alot lot Sloss but bigger. And Sloss made pig iron. Sloss opened in 1881, closed in 1971 and was declared a NHL and museum in 1981. I remember going there on a grade school field trip in the late 80's. In the mid 90's they converted one of the casting sheds in a stage for concerts and theatre with a 3000 head capacity. In Oct 98 Sloss Fright Furnace was born. The largest haunted attraction in the state. The trail was only 1/2 mile. I started scaring people there in 2001 and my last October at SFF was 2011. The trail was 1½ miles long and had 2 sub trail off site. SFF operated every October from 1998-2019 and had millions of patrons. Covid shuddered SFF for good. But Sloss lives on 50+ years after the furnaces went cold. There's a annual 3 day Brewfest there every summer that attracts thousands, concerts, weddings and other events. Sloss is open to the public after being closed for a 1.5 years due to Covid. Aw shucks. I'm getting all nostalgic about my home. As they use say at Sloss. Blood, Sweat, Ore and Coal. Forever the Furnace owns my Soul.
Roll Tide!
Incredible. Hard working Men, but even then in the 90's you could see the inefficiencies. What a shame places like this disappear for workers that all say 'Hallo my name's ..... how may I help you'.
This is the best, "how it worked" video I've seen. Somehow I never managed to come across this before! Fantastic video, thanks for uploading.
A Tribute to a great era, also a tribute to the decay of our country. Can't help but feel sad that we can't do this anymore.
I do understand where you are coming from, but will forever remain an eternal optimist. Never say never... exciting times are coming back soon
I am very proud of all workers that contributed to the growth of the company!!
Having grown up in South Bethlehem, that red dust was all over the houses and cars. When they dumped the slag near Saucon Park, the sky would glow the overcast sky red.
I visited BSC's plant at Sparrow's Point, Baltimore in the 70s and the operation there seemed a lot slicker. Still a shame that people who worked there lost their jobs so that financial hot-shots could get richer using Chinese imports.
Wasn't Sparrows Point the largest production mill in the states ?
We had cranes there for their last shutdown before the final closing
If you've never seen steel production, it's truly an amazing process .
The last of "Smokestack America" 🇺🇸
Without Bethlehem and Sparrows Point, there would be no America as we know it.
@@joebonola7458 I've been to other steel works (including my former home city- Cardiff, Wales), seen and felt the heat of the processes and how hard the guys worked.
One of the foremen kindly gave me an unofficial tour of Sparrows Point and it was, as you said, amazing.
I hate to see industry like that abandoned- It like seeing the heart ripped out of the country.
That’s true to some extent, but don’t forget the role of the epa in this. The regulation is what really killed industry-and deregulation is what is making it possible now.
In 2000 and 2001, I was a truck driver delivering refractory brick from Michigan to the steel mill. The brick was used to line the giant ladles in an area of the mill no longer used. I asked them what the point of this was since the plant was shut down. A supervisor said "It gives them something to do". I wish I had taken pictures of the place. It was a giant ghost town with maybe a dozen union workers in total. I drove my tractor trailer inside the building near these giant ladles. There was a supervisor hut in the middle of the building with the lights on inside. Was like a little house in the middle of this huge factory. I go inside to find the forklift operator, and they were all sitting in there playing cards and drinking coffee. The factory didn't look like it had been operated in years. Windows busted out everywhere, no lights on inside except for that little hut.
I asked him if I could go up on the catwalk to watch them lay the refractory brick, "yeah, no problem". I get up there, probably 4 stories high, and look down into one of the ladles. There were two guys actually laying brick, and about 5 guys standing around doing nothing. I've been to a few steel mills including Nucor, but never witnessed anything this weird. Nucor was bustling and alive, Beth was dead as a door nail.
Unions. Cancer. Same thing, both kill their host.
I was in that plant several times during the late 80's.
My father in law Jimmy Giles spent his whole life there. Hard work but he loved the place. He worked at the one in Pennsylvania
About 75 % of New York Cities skyline came through this plant, not to mention the Golden Gate Bridge....35,000 men worked in or on the property in Southside Bethlehem during World War 2, when only 60,000 people lived in the entire City...
I was a dispatcher and one night they had a slag explosion that shook me about 3 miles away. Suddenly my phone lines lit up like a Christmas tree, every line. Homes were literally moved on their foundations and windows broke all over the place from the explosion. I took over 100 calls for damage in less than an hour. We were on the opposite side of the river from the slag pit and apparently someone wasn't watching and dumped slag into a large puddle of water causing an explosion. It was a rough evening as we only had one dispatcher on duty then and had to answer phones and radio traffic simultaneously. I wasn't too happy with Bethlehem Steel that night. I worked my butt off.
Love this video my home town used to have blast furnaces everywhere!! Youngstown strong 💪
Big one in Buffalo, NY.
Yes sir 🇺🇸
I spent my early years in the shadow of a small foundry in northern NJ (American Brake Shoe) where my grandfather worked, and also within view of a major Ford Motor Company manufacturing plant. The smell of the coke ovens early on a crisp winter morning while enduring the Watergate saga on the black and white TV is burned into my memory, and still brings back fond memories whenever I pass by a steel mill that has coke ovens in operation. I will never forget the coke oven smell, nor the sound of the steam whistle at the start of shift, lunch break, and end of shift.
I now live an hour north of the former Bethlehem Steel site. It's sad how the steel industry has died off in the US.
My hometown of Buffalo (Lackawanna) had an enormous Bethlehem Steel plant there, 1000+ acres site. Closed in the 1980’s, causing Buffalo to slump economically for an entire generation. Finally making a comeback now, and the old brownfield site is slowly being cleaned up by section for light industrial reuse.
didnt close in the 80s not sure exactly when in 90s i hauled steel out of there in 90s
Do you remember the big fire there in 2017, that was big, i wonder what caused it.
@@almaysri743 I saw it on the news, no idea what happened.
I hauled coils out of there from 1990 to 1994, all automotive grade, republic steel runs the bar mill , and the galvanized finish mill is now a scrap shredder run by metalico, all in lackawanna ny
I worked in the hot end of the last fully integrated steel mill west of the Mississippi river. It operated just like in this video. My mill was torn down and the good parts were sent to China.
China isn't encumbered by our modern sensibilities to human rights or preserving the environment.
Driving through the back road a long the blast furnace area behind the casino especially at night or walking around there's such an eerie feeling, walking the walkway they built along the furnace further explains the process, you can stand there and imagine whatver was like when it was all operational, the sound must have been deafening, where I live in NJ we had a steel plant actually at one time we had a couple but the last one to close you could hear it especially at night, a lot of creaking and banging.
Unfortunately, these old steel companies didn’t keep up with technological change. They couldn’t compete withe new blast furnaces and continuous casters refined by the Japanese and Germans and the U.S. Government didn’t really support innovation
BUT, It, the U S Government, did rebuild and support both Japan and Germany out of the Goodness of ITs NOT Christian heart.
@@steveholton4130 Shortsighted much?
@@PowerslideSWE Do you know what sarcasm is? Do you know what the Marshall Plan was?
@@steveholton4130 Yes, and yes.
Unions were probably the worst.... Organization making money off the back of workers taking away rights to negotiate for ones self, what a stupid concept.
Nice up close views of a steel mill blast furnace's many operations. Thanks for sharing!
Back when America was still great before CEOs and politicians sold us out to foreign goods.
Don't forget to give a little credit to the EPA.....
Americans want ever less expensive products and that led to offshoring. That is how Walmart/Home Depot/Amazon/Ebay have gotten so big
And now it is a Casino.......
Blame Capitalism
@@ECsponger2 The manufacturers always go to the least expensive location to produce their products. Capitalism!
Very interesting. I grew up in Bethlehem and had the pleasure of taking a tour through the mill once. Was awed by the BOF and the I beam mill. Sad that a once great industrial giant is now a casino. Although I must say, the city itself looks good. Visited most recently in July of 2020.
My grandparents lived on Route 5 in Buffalo NY directly across the street from Bethlehem Steel plant. Oh the smell! My father was a metallurgical engineer who started out at Bethlehem Steel Plant in Buffalo and then moved to Raritan River Steel in New Jersey.
Back in -88 I was posted at a coastal artillery fort in Russaro island, Finland. Two massive cannons next to the barracks, tucked away in vaseline. Betlehem Steel Company. They had a duel with russian cruiser Kirov the second day of winter war, 1939. Managed to make a good dent in Kirov, limped away after.
I was helping tear out windows of an old round top building the other day, it had Bethlehem steel trusses in it, I wish I had the funds and equipment to pull them...
The astoundingly inefficient material handling process reflects the well known failure of Bethlehem Steel to innovate and update to compete with the more modern foreign plants, focusing instead on short term corporate profits instead of a long term jobs.
Ore, coke and limestone was handled 6 times before hitting the furnace? And they never tried to improve it. :/
@@fewtoes Yeah that blew me away. So much double handling of the materials.
So true. The output of the furnace may have been great steel, but this has to be the most inefficient bulk material handling ever patchwork quilted together.
Bethlehem's board of directors steadfastly refused to modernize they drove that once great company into the ground.
@@neilpuckett359 was it that or did the unions refuse to agree on the basis that many jobs would have been lost in making those improvements? Legit question as I am not from the USA.
During Christmas of 1977 the rail servicing company that I was working for shutdown operation for the holiday and sent the crew home. They needed two people to stay with the train, so I and a fellow employee agreed to stay. The unit was tied up close to the mill and to get to the stores, etc. we had to walk next to all of the mill operations. Even to this day I remember the people, sounds, smells, and the constant motion. It was the best two weeks of my life! We worked on railroads all over North America, but my stay in Bethlehem will always be my favorite. And now it's all gone!
I went there and to Sparrows Point on audits back in 1980 (the company I worked for used quite a bit of Bethlehem steel plate). Even back then they were getting a lot of foreign competition with countries dumping steel onto our market. It is sad that today most of our heavy steel manufacturing capability is gone. Heavy fabrication of forgings and castings is being done overseas. I have seen the downturn of many towns from losing their manufacturing base to overseas competition. We have become a “service economy” where min wage jobs are plentiful.
I worked there in 1973, Lots of interesting memories.
I worked for Allied Chemical's coke plant in Ashland, KY in 1973. It was a hell of an operation. I ran the charge car over the oven banks.
@@1940limited I have a huge amount of respect for anyone that ran a larry car back then. One of the nastiest jobs I have ever seen. The one worse I saw was the lid man that opened and closed the holes you fed the coal into.
@@tomhoward1996 I had a magnetic device that did that as part of the charge car, but a separate man then poured sealer all around the cracks after the lids were installed. It was a really neat place and a great experience for a 23 year guy. Thanks for the comment.
Makes me a proud Pennsylvanian...:)
I lived in Orem, UT in the early 1990s during the last days of the Geneva Steel plant. The owners struggled to keep the WW II era plant going but in the end were unsuccessful. The plant is now gone. Although the mill was not pretty to look at, it provided good paying jobs that did not require a college degree. i think those that worked there had more pride in their work than in what replaced them in our modern economy, i.e. stocking supermarket shelves.
My dad's side of the family worked in Bethlehem, namely him, his dad, and my uncle. Dad worked there until its closure, then we moved to the United Kingdom...
Now the whole property is a casino how magnificent this country is!
The Bethlehem site built our bridges, our battleships and our machine tools. Now the Bethlehem site has a casino and "outlet" stores selling us cheap Chinese-made clothing and other Chinajunk. Bethlehem could have modernized, but their pension and benefit costs were killing them, thanks to lucrative union contracts. My father and my uncles worked at the Conemaugh rail car furnaces & foundry; they made a ton of money in the 50's & 60's, but their pensions disappeared after Bethlehem died.
Yeah unions have really screwed over the working man they stood on to make money doing nothing.
Even steel is now imported from foreign countries. My late father worked at the Bethlehem plant from the late 60's to March 7, 1986, his life ended on March 8, 1986 at night when a drunk lady hit him when he was walking across the street 2 miles from our house. My mom passed away on June 14 this year in the hospital. Her breath gave out.
My uncle donald lutrell worked there his whole life till he retired. He has since passed. One of my favorite uncles
Back then you could work for a good company your entire life. Those days are gone.
This was made in the summer of 1995. Interestingly enough, their last casting was done in November of the same year.
Huh. Didn't know we were supplying Bethlehem! The furnace shut down before I joined, but the limestone operation was just as old as the steel plant. Used to supply Lebanon and Sparrows, as well.
Near the end, the shunt engine that we used could barely make it up a half-percent grade. Did you know a 172H Caterpillar wheel loader will push a full-sized diesel locomotive engine?
For about 50 feet. Wide-open throttle, all the way. Then, you have to stop and let the temperature gauge come back down.
I wish those plants were still in operation!!!!!!
I remember driving by those furnaces as a trucker in the late seventies. The first time I saw them it was awe inspiring as I marveled at their size. American industry and government have combined to destroy an entire region of this country’s heartland. A sad testament to the power of greed
and of activism. Countless millions have suffered because of these actions.
Thus would be a GREAT model railroad layout !
My grandfather worked and retired for bethlehem steel in bethlehem.. my family is from and still lives in the area, it's a shame it turned into a casino and music stage and business center and eating places .
Brings back memories. That would be the summer between my freshman and sophomore years at Lehigh up the street. Believe it or not, that operation was just a shell of what it had been even 6 years before.
I don't think anything is left unless ArcelorMittal found some gem worth keeping like the RR track caster in Middletown.
My Grandfather(PapPap) operated the cranes there! You could see them going over the Minsi Trail Bridge! I would ride in the back seat of the '57 Chevy with Nana to pickup PapPap after work! I asked Nana one day..."why do you take PapPap to work and pick him up"? She told me ...years later... "so he wouldn't spend all our money at Tchaikowsky's Tavern"!!! Years later...when I was 16...I used to go to what we called "Chicks" Tavern(Tchaikowsky's) and tell the owner who I was... and he would sell me a couple of six packs of Schmidts!!! The tears of memories are rolling down my face as I write this...
Awesome steel operations 👍♐️
I have driven past that plant 100s of times, if not more, I remember looking out the window of my moms Jeep when I was a kid in total awe of the size and scope of the works, we need that great American manufacturing back
Unfortunately those days are behind us as we dismantle the engine of wealth generation that built not only this nation but much of the world, and sell the parts for scrap.
Wow! Those large engines sure we're amazing! It's like something you would see at the Coolspring museum!
My first job in 93 was working at Crown Steel Sales in Chicago and steel from Beth used to come in every weekend in 2 rail cars.
😢 this is my local history I'm so glad I found this
My gosh that was an inefficient as hell operation. I wondered around what's left of the steel plant last summer. The buildings are all gone, except for the blast furnaces which are lit up at night. You can now walk the elevated train track right up against the blast furnaces. The train cars are still there they just parked them and walked away. The iron dump pit is now flat and its where the casino is built; however the casino is just a tiny portion of the former pit. The casino is the size of a grain of rice in the dump pit. In 1995 the plant closed and the employees just walked away. What is left in place is frozen in time.
How would you have changed it into an efficient as hell operation?
@@scotthares he would try to turn it into a solar plant LOL
Worked at NLMK in Portage IN, two EMF's and a continued slab pouring caster. Seen my fair share of men killed and almost killed, mostly not following safety protocols. A 12 hour turn there you'll find out who the real men we're.
what mill was that
this vid is awesome DD - one of the best descriptions of steel making there is - and we all *love* a blast-furnace!
Those structures gave me nightmares when I was little because I could see them from the apartment window of my old living place.
thanks for posting this great video!! Much appreciated!
To think of how this furnace operation helped the wartime effort during WWII...
Scary when you realize we don't have any of those (manufacturing) capabilities today.
@@mattzinicola7460 We still do, Modern mills in the US can make a CRAZY amount of steel thanks to computer automation
Bethlehem Steel "The Backbone Of America" so says Pete Campbell.
murica has no back bone, it's a coward nation at best.
@@PatrickBaptist feel free to leave it whenever you’d like.
@@Shnick Free to stay. I'm not a good little brainwashed nazi but that isn't a requirement to live here. I'm free to burn the flag and hate the government and the countries abominations all I want.
@@PatrickBaptist ahhh yes the beloved term of every SJW/closeted communist; nazi
@@funny3scene If you knew anything about me you would know far better than to label me that, it's ok though I understand that was the best you could do. Thanks for the laugh.
I worked on a rolling mill plant in Bahrain in 1996. All the machinery came from Philaadelphia. The whole plant was removed and set up in an industrial area outside Manama, Bahrain. Everything was marked " made in USA. " A sign of great quality.
Our politicians must remember they have four years to the next election.
Each council must work to reflect the interests of the local unemployed. New iobs, housing,......
I worked on the Schenectady built General Electric gas turbines at Bapco in Bahrain in 1979. I stayed in Awali, swam in the old rock version of the Al Adari pool, cruised the abandoned airstrip on Fridays, shopped at the Sook in Manama. I will bet the place changed by the time you got there.
really hard to believe how antiquated all of the technology looks, amazing that they were still competitive in 1995. not surprising they went out of business
One of the guys diagonally across from my grandmother’s old house use to work at the shipyard in sparrow’s point. Although I personally never saw the place and was like 8 years old or so when it shut down, I still thing it’s a shame that they tore down the infamous (at least around here) “L” furnace. They did save the star of David that sat on top of it. I’m sure the developers who bought the land could have worked around the L furnace, I know I would have if I were them.
Great video. It confirms I DID grow up in the good ole' days. graduated high school in 1996. I think the people that were old when I was young were right...........and lucky to have lived their life in better times.
One fact which has always fascinated (or perhaps terrified) me is this: Almost every single atom of naturally-occurring Iron in the Universe was formed in the core of a star which was moments later to explode.
While all heavy elements are naturally formed through the supernova process, Iron represents the moment the star's death is inevitable; fusion thereafter cannot produce sufficient heat to pause the gravitational collapse.