December 11, 1915: Minnesota Steel Plant first manufactures steel

On this day in Duluth in 1915, the Minnesota Steel Plant finished manufacturing its first steel billets, but it would be several more weeks before the rolling mill would be operational and ready to turn those billets into steel rails, angle irons, and structural steel. According to historian Walter Van Brunt, the plant went into operation “with the tapping of No. 6 open-hearth furnace at 6:10 o’clock a. m. [and] the manufacture of steel at Duluth became a reality.” By 7 a.m. twenty-six steel ingots “were rushed to the stripping pit, and before 7 o’clock the stripping had been started.” While the plant was far from running at capacity, already four open hearth furnaces and one blast furnace were being fed 25 to 50 carloads of Mesabi range ore hauled by the Duluth, Missabe & Northern Railroad. Not all of the plant’s first steel would remain at the plant for finishing; some was shipped east to Gary, Indiana, on December 15. Gary was built as a United States Steel company town in 1906 and named for Elbert Henry Gary, the founding chairman of the United States Steel Corporation. In Duluth, the Minnesota Steel Plant was part of USS. Morgan Park, named for USS president J. P. Morgan, was built as a company town to house skilled employees of Protestant and primarily Scandinavian descent. The plant’s unskilled laborers—mostly European immigrants who practiced Catholicism and, later, African Americans—lived in barracks in Gary and New Duluth. By 1922, to fill up occupancy, Morgan Park allowed Catholic employees in, and the plant even built the new residents a church, which was demolished in 2017. In 1930 USS gave the entire neighborhood to the city of Duluth. Learn more about the Minnesota Steel Plant and other Duluth metal fabricators here and Morgan Park here.

The blast furnace at the USS Minnesota Steel Plant in Duluth. (Image: Zenith City Press)