Morgan Park, Duluth, Minnesota

Last updated
Morgan Park
Aerial view of Morgan Park, Duluth 2022-11-26 01.jpg
Morgan Park in 2022
Coordinates: 46°41′18″N92°12′37″W / 46.68833°N 92.21028°W / 46.68833; -92.21028
Country United States
State Minnesota
County St. Louis
City Duluth
Time zone UTC-6 (CST)
  Summer (DST) UTC-5 (CDT)

Morgan Park is a neighborhood in Duluth, Minnesota, United States. The site of a coking and mill operation that closed in 1981, it was closed to the public for decades after being placed on the Superfund list by the Environmental Protection Agency. [1]

Contents

Arbor Street/88th Avenue West serves as a main route in the community. Grand Avenue is nearby. The area was first developed for worker housing to support the U.S. Steel plant known as the Duluth Works. It was developed along the Saint Louis River.

Background

The Morgan Park neighborhood is also known as a planned community built by U.S. Steel to serve its Duluth Works steel plant in the early 1900s. Originally named "Model City" during its designing phase in 1913 and renamed in honor of U.S. Steel's founder J. P. Morgan in June 1914, the town of Morgan Park was built and run by the U.S. Steel Corporation until 1933, when it was all deeded to the City of Duluth.

The community thrived with recreational facilities, community clubs, the Lake View Store, billed as America's first indoor mall, a K-12 school, and its own police and fire department. Eventually, the steel plant declined and was shut down in phases, the last facilities closing in 1981. The historic nature of the community is still present.

History

At the time of its completion, Morgan Park stood as one of the crowning achievements of company town conception. Connected to the city of Duluth by an East and West road link, the town was somewhat isolated from the rest of the city, and until the 1930s, only employees of the U.S. Steel Corporation and its subsidiaries could live there. After the properties had been transferred to the city, residential housing was opened to any qualified candidate.

Minnesota Steel Company operated the steel plant. The town proprietor, known as the Morgan Park Company, was set up as its direct subsidiary. The Morgan Park Company served as a kind of private community government, responsible for trash pickup, lawn and house care, police and fire protection, health care (until the hospital closed in the 1920s), and snow removal. Residents of the town were expected to keep their homes up in a generally conservative suburban manner. If they failed to do so, the Morgan Park Company would do the work and deduct the costs from the employee's paycheck.

Duluth Works

At the start of the 20th century, an industrial empire was developing and expanding along the Great Lakes, based on the great natural resources that supported iron and steel manufacturing. During the early 1900s, the Minnesota Legislature gave thought of imposing a hefty ore tax on every ton of ore that was shipped from the vast deposits on the Iron Range. No other company would be hurt more by this than the newly incorporated U.S. Steel. To persuade the legislature to give up the ore tax, US Steel agreed to build a manufacturing complex in Duluth, and produce some finished materials and products within the state that supplied the most iron ore to the company. US Steel carried coal and other raw materials in their ships up the Great Lakes to Duluth in their otherwise empty cargo holds; they filled the freighters with iron ore to return to the mills on the lower lakes, especially in Illinois and Ohio. Many speculators thought that Duluth would become a massive manufacturing center, second only to Pittsburgh or Chicago, but these ambitions never came close to being realized.

The Minnesota Steel Company, which was incorporated by U.S. Steel in 1907, was the subsidiary operating unit of U.S. Steel in Duluth. The steel plant was under construction in 1908 and poured its first ingot of steel on December 11, 1916. It was the largest integrated steel works west of Chicago until Geneva Steel was constructed in 1943. Minnesota Steel Company was the largest employer in the city of Duluth from its inception to its closing, to include the steel and cement plants, and was the fourth-largest industrial manufacturing facility in the State of Minnesota. Minnesota Steel was the holding company for the steel plant (and for Morgan Park itself) until it was leased to the American Steel and Wire Division (AS&W) of U.S. Steel in June 1932. This was part of a restructuring effort by the parent company to deal with the Great Depression and associated market problems.

AS&W would remain the plant's main operating parent under the U.S. Steel imperial umbrella until 1964, when more restructuring move by U.S. Steel placed several of its smaller operations under one division. (At this point forward, the steel plant was known simply within the Corporation and the market as USS Duluth Works.)

The Duluth Works was primarily a wire product manufacturer, taking raw materials such as iron ore and coke, and converting them into iron and, later, steel for the production of blooms, bars, billets and rods. The Duluth Works shipped many of its semi-finished products to other U.S. Steel mills for finishing. The merchant and wire mills used its own steel to furnish various types of nails, wire, barbed wire, fencing and fence posts, highway mesh, and sign posts and other various products. As an act of pride, the Duluth Works nail department left out the fourth barb, used in holding the wire and then striking the top of it to make a head, leaving an obvious omission on the side of the nail to signify that this nail was made in Duluth. It was used in promotions in the Twin Ports area to entice consumers to "Look for the missing fourth barb" on the nail to see if it was made at Duluth Works.

In the late 1930s until its closing, Duluth Works fence posts, steel wool and barbed wire, were produced within the U.S. Steel empire only at the Duluth Works. The wire mesh product, created in 1954, and the US Steel's Universal Atlas Cement plant were instrumental to building the ICBM missile silos of the Midwest for the Strategic Air Command of the United States Air Force.

Closing and fate

Duluth Works was caught up in industrial restructuring during the early 1970s to the mid-1980s, as was other heavy industry in the Midwest. The story was the same as at other plants all over the country; Youngstown. Homestead. Duquesne. Fairless. McKeesport. Many plants that were once powerhouses within U.S. Steel and the industry as a whole, were demolished by cutting torches. The dumping of artificially low-priced foreign steel in the United States was partly to blame, but the Duluth Works and many other plants had not been modernized with the Basic Oxygen Furnaces (BOF) to replace its outdated open hearth technology. This had been introduced when the plant was first built. Duluth Works was located in a market where other plants could meet its own output and demand.

The Duluth Works, despite being an integrated steel maker, used only 20% of its own steel for products that it made for its own market area, an area that was sparsely populated and small in demand. The rest of its semi-finished steel material was sent to Joliet Works, Chicago, and Gary. In the 1960s and 1970s, there were rising demands for industry to clean up its effect on the environment. In June 1970 the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency gave U.S. Steel three years to conduct a study of its harmful emissions at the Duluth Works and a two-year follow-up window to implement corrective actions. Instead, U.S. Steel decided in September 1971 to close the "hot side" of the Duluth Works. It ended all iron and steel-making productions of the blast furnaces, pig iron casters and open hearths would cease. 1,600 steel workers were out of their jobs.

The cold side operations were to continue, using steel brought in from Gary or other U.S Steel plants, to make rod and wire products. In October 1973, the company also shut down the cold side, leaving only the coke plant, the cement plant and several other smaller operations going in Morgan Park. The cement plant (operated by Universal Atlas Cement Company - another subsidiary of U.S. Steel) closed in 1976, leaving only the coke plant still operating. Only 200 employees remained as residents of Morgan Park. Finally in 1979, the MPCA clamped down on the emissions of the coke plant as well, and in 1981 US Steel closed the coke plant and ended its association with Duluth.

The government held U.S. Steel to its responsibilities as a land tenant. The land occupied by the former plant and the surrounding area was polluted after almost 70 years of heavy industry. So polluted, that the Pollution Control Agency placed the site on the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund list in 1984, requiring a plan and actions for hazard containment and environmental remediation. That year, buildings were inspected and harmful materials removed. In 1988, US Steel contracted for the razing and demolition of the once massive complex; the last of the buildings was brought down in 1997. Today the land of the former steel and cement plants sit primarily vacant, a brownfield available for development. The cement plant has been deemed as "cleaned" by U.S. Steel and the city of Duluth. The former steel plant site still has areas affected with pollution, which are areas of concern for area residents and prospective new tenants of the property. The MPCA, EPA and U.S. Steel continue to monitor and treat the 640-acre (2.6 km2) site and surrounding areas.

The Duluth company Ikonics Corporation, in April 2008, has expressed intent to build a warehouse facility on the former cement plant site. With the City of Duluth's Duluth Economic and Development Authority, or DEDA, it has begun land preparation to use up to 40 acres (160,000 m2) of the former industrial plant. After almost 30 years, some activity will return to Morgan Parks industrial plain.

Adjacent neighborhoods

(Directions following those of Duluth's general street grid system, not actual geographical coordinates)

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Duluth, Minnesota</span> City in Minnesota, U.S.

Duluth is a port city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of St. Louis County. Located on Lake Superior in Minnesota's Arrowhead Region, the city is a hub for cargo shipping. Commodities shipped from the Port of Duluth include coal, iron ore, grain, limestone, cement, salt, wood pulp, steel coil, and wind turbine components. Duluth is south of the Iron Range and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mesabi Range</span> Mining district in northeastern Minnesota

The Mesabi Iron Range is a mining district and mountain range in northeastern Minnesota following an elongate trend containing large deposits of iron ore. It is the largest of four major iron ranges in the region collectively known as the Iron Range of Minnesota. First described in 1866, it is the chief iron ore mining district in the United States. The district is located largely in Itasca and Saint Louis counties. It has been extensively worked since 1892, and has seen a transition from high-grade direct shipping ores through gravity concentrates to the current industry exclusively producing iron ore (taconite) pellets. Production has been dominantly controlled by vertically integrated steelmakers since 1901, and therefore is dictated largely by US ironmaking capacity and demand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">U.S. Steel</span> American steel-producing company

United States Steel Corporation, more commonly known as U.S. Steel, is an American integrated steel producer headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with production operations primarily in the United States of America and in Central Europe. The company produces and sells steel products, including flat-rolled and tubular products for customers in industries across automotive, construction, consumer, electrical, industrial equipment, distribution, and energy. Operations also include iron ore and coke production facilities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steel Authority of India Limited</span> Central Public Sector Undertaking

Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) is a central public sector undertaking (PSU) based in New Delhi, India. It is under the ownership of the Ministry of Steel, Government of India with an annual turnover of 105,398 crore (US$13 billion) for the fiscal year 2022-23. Incorporated on 24 January 1973, SAIL has 57,139 employees. With an annual production of 18.29 million metric tons, It is the largest government owned steel producer. The hot metal production capacity of the company will further increase and is expected to reach a level of 50 million tonnes per annum by 2025.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Iron Range</span> Iron-ore mining districts around Lake Superior in the United States and Canada

The Iron Range is collectively or individually a number of elongated iron-ore mining districts around Lake Superior in the United States and Canada. Much of the ore-bearing region lies alongside the range of granite hills formed by the Giants Range batholith. These cherty iron ore deposits are Precambrian in the Vermilion Range and middle Precambrian in the Mesabi and Cuyuna ranges, all in Minnesota. The Gogebic Range in Wisconsin and the Marquette Iron Range and Menominee Range in Michigan have similar characteristics and are of similar age. Natural ores and concentrates were produced from 1848 until the mid-1950s, when taconites and jaspers were concentrated and pelletized, and started to become the major source of iron production.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad</span> Railroad in the United States

The Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad was a class II railroad that operates in northwestern Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steel mill</span> Plant for steelmaking

A steel mill or steelworks is an industrial plant for the manufacture of steel. It may be an integrated steel works carrying out all steps of steelmaking from smelting iron ore to rolled product, but may also be a plant where steel semi-finished casting products are made from molten pig iron or from scrap.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range Railway</span> Railroad operating in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin

The Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range Railway (DM&IR), informally known as the Missabe Road, was a railroad operating in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin that used to haul iron ore and later taconite to the Great Lakes ports of Duluth and Two Harbors, Minnesota. Control of the railway was acquired on May 10, 2004, by the Canadian National Railway (CN) when it purchased the assets of Great Lakes Transportation.

Kalinganagar is a planned industrial town in Jajpur district of coastal Odisha, India. Kalinganagar is emerging to be major global hub in steel, power and ancillary products. A large number of steel plants including projects by Jindal Steel and Tata Steel are in various stages of implementation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ironworks</span> Building or site where iron is smelted

An ironworks or iron works is an industrial plant where iron is smelted and where heavy iron and steel products are made. The term is both singular and plural, i.e. the singular of ironworks is ironworks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bhilai Steel Plant</span> Steel plant in Chhattisgarh, India

The Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP), located in Bhilai, in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, is India's first and main producer of steel rails, as well as a major producer of wide steel plates and other steel products. The plant also produces steel and markets various chemical by-products from its coke ovens and coal chemical plant. It was set up with the help of the USSR in 1955.

IISCO Steel Plant of Steel Authority of India Limited is an integrated steel plant located at Burnpur, a neighbourhood in Asansol city, in the Asansol subdivision of Paschim Bardhaman district, West Bengal, India.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Colorado Fuel and Iron</span> American steel company

The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) was a large steel conglomerate founded by the merger of previous business interests in 1892. By 1903 it was mainly owned and controlled by John D. Rockefeller and Jay Gould's financial heirs. While it came to control many plants throughout the country, its main plant was a steel mill on the south side of Pueblo, Colorado, and was the city's main industry for most of its history. From 1901 to 1912, Colorado Fuel and Iron was one of the Dow Jones Industrials. The steel-market crash of 1982 led to the decline of the company. After going through several bankruptcies, the company was acquired by Oregon Steel Mills in 1993, and changed its name to Rocky Mountain Steel Mills. In January 2007, Rocky Mountain Steel Mills, along with the rest of Oregon Steel's holdings, were acquired by EVRAZ Group, a Russian steel corporation, for $2.3 billion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Union Railroad (Pittsburgh)</span>

Union Railroad is a Class III switching railroad located in Allegheny County in Western Pennsylvania. The company is owned by Transtar, Inc., which is a subsidiary of Fortress Transportation and Infrastructure Investors, after being acquired from U.S. Steel in 2021. The railroad's primary customers are the three plants of the USS Mon Valley Works, the USS Edgar Thomson Steel Works, the USS Irvin Works and the USS Clairton Works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edgar Thomson Steel Works</span> Steel mill, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US

The Edgar Thomson Steel Works is a steel mill in the Pittsburgh area communities of Braddock and North Braddock, Pennsylvania. It has been active since 1875. It is currently owned by U.S. Steel and is known as Mon Valley Works – Edgar Thomson Plant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company</span> American steelmaking company

The Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (1852–1952), also known as TCI and the Tennessee Company, was a major American steel manufacturer with interests in coal and iron ore mining and railroad operations. Originally based entirely within Tennessee, it relocated most of its business to Alabama in the late nineteenth century, following protests over its use of free convict labor. With a sizable real estate portfolio, the company owned several Birmingham satellite towns, including Ensley, Fairfield, Docena, Edgewater and Bayview. It also established a coal mining camp it sold to U.S. Steel which developed it into the Westfield, Alabama planned community.

The Duluth Works was an industrial steel and cement manufacturing complex located in Duluth, Minnesota, United States, in operation 1915 to 1987. The complex was operated by the United States Steel Corporation. Officially, the plant's purpose was to supply the growing Midwest with steel finished products. Unofficially, they were built as part of a "gentleman's agreement" between U.S. Steel and the State of Minnesota to not impose hefty iron ore taxes on U.S. Steel in exchange for a fully integrated steel plant within Minnesota, whose mines furnished 80% of the ore to U.S. Steel. The combined works of the steel and cement plant were the largest employers in Duluth and the fourth largest industrial complex in Minnesota.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Whyalla Steelworks</span>

The Whyalla Steelworks is a fully integrated steelworks and the only manufacturer of rail in Australia. Iron ore is mined in the Middleback Range to feed the steelworks, resulting in the distribution of finished steel products of over 90 different grades. It occupies a 1,000 ha site on the shore of False Bay, Spencer Gulf and is the largest employer in Whyalla, South Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scunthorpe Steelworks</span> Industrial complex in northern England

The Iron and Steel Industry in Scunthorpe was established in the mid 19th century, following the discovery and exploitation of middle Lias ironstone east of Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, England.

In 2022, the United States was the world’s third-largest producer of raw steel, and the sixth-largest producer of pig iron. The industry produced 29 million metric tons of pig iron and 88 million tons of steel. Most iron and steel in the United States is now made from iron and steel scrap, rather than iron ore. The United States is also a major importer of iron and steel, as well as iron and steel products.

References

  1. Hollingsworth, Jana (October 27, 2023). "Once-polluted Duluth riverfront to reopen in '24: U.S. Steel Superfund site in Morgan Park receives a $165 million cleanup". Star Tribune. Retrieved 2024-06-15 via ProQuest.