Steelworks Center of the West

Last updated April 27, 2019

Steelworks Museum SteelMuseum-PuebloCO.jpg — Steelworks Museum

The Steelworks Center of the West, is a non-profit organization focused on preserving the history of the coal and steel industry in the Western United States. Based in Pueblo, Colorado and formerly known as the Bessemer Historical Society, which took its name from the community of Bessemer, site of the Colorado Coal and Iron Bessemer Works which was named after the Bessemer process for making steel invented by Henry Bessemer.^[1]

Pueblo is a home rule municipality that is the county seat and the most populous city of Pueblo County, Colorado, United States. The population was 106,595 in 2010 census, making it the 267th most populous city in the United States and the 9th largest in Colorado. Pueblo is the heart of the Pueblo Metropolitan Statistical Area, totaling over 160,000 people and an important part of the Front Range Urban Corridor. As of 2014, Pueblo is the primary city of the Pueblo–Cañon City combined statistical area (CSA) totaling approximately 208,000 people, making it the 134th largest in the nation.

Bessemer, Colorado was a city in Colorado that was incorporated in 1886. The community was named after Henry Bessemer, an English inventor. It was one of four adjacent towns settled after the Colorado Gold Rush of 1859. The communities of South Pueblo, Central Pueblo, Pueblo, and Bessemer were later merged to create the modern City of Pueblo, Colorado. Bessemer was an independent city until 1894 and was the last city to join Pueblo. The former community of Bessemer is sometimes now referred to as the Bessemer neighborhood. Its also known as the Bessemer area. The Bessemer area is home to both Bessemer Academy and Bessemer park.

Colorado Coal and Iron Company was formed in 1880 when three Denver and Rio Grande subsidiaries controlled by William J. Palmer merged. These were the Colorado Coal and Steel Works Company, the Central Colorado Improvement Company, and the Southern Colorado Coal and Town Company. In 1890 the company appointed Henry S. Grove President. Grove, a recognized "Captain of Industry" would eventually merge the company with the Colorado Fuel Company to form the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, which for many years was Colorado's largest employer and dominated industry around the state for decades.

Colorado Coal and Iron Company merged with the Colorado Fuel Company to form Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) in 1892.^[1]^[2]

The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) was a large steel concentration. 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 lead 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, along with the rest of Oregon Steel's holdings, was acquired by EVRAZ Group, a Russian steel corporation, for $2.3 billion.

The Steelworks Center of the West owns and operates the Steelworks Museum, the Steelworks Archives (formerly the CF&I Archives), and the Steelworks Park that is currently under construction in Pueblo. They provide continuing education of the steel industry's impact on the region through the preservation of historic archives, artifacts, and buildings of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, and through related activities leading to the industrialization of the Western US. They collect, preserve, and exhibit documents and artifacts from the steel and mining industry, Pueblo’s Bessemer neighborhood, and from the employees and families of employees who have worked either at the steel mill or in the coal and iron mines of Southern Colorado.

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The Ludlow Massacre emanated from a labor conflict: the Colorado National Guard and Colorado Fuel and Iron Company guards attacked a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado, on April 20, 1914, with the National Guard using machine guns to fire into the colony. Approximately twenty-one people, including miners' wives and children, were killed. The chief owner of the mine, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., was widely excoriated for having orchestrated the massacre.

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An ironworks or iron works is a building or site 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.

Founded in 1899, the Colorado and Wyoming Railway is a subsidiary of the Evraz North America. It hauls coal, ore and steel products on about five miles of track inside ERVAZ - Pueblo, CO Steel Mills facility in Pueblo, Colorado, and connects to the Union Pacific Railroad and the BNSF Railway. The railway used to be a much larger railroad, serving the CF&I's mills, steel plants that were the only vertically integrated steel mills west of the Rockies until World War II.

Ferrous metallurgy is the metallurgy of iron and its alloys. It began far back in prehistory. The earliest surviving iron artifacts, from the 4th millennium BC in Egypt, were made from meteoritic iron-nickel. It is not known when or where the smelting of iron from ores began, but by the end of the 2nd millennium BC iron was being produced from iron ores from Sub-Saharan Africa to China. The use of wrought iron was known by the 1st millennium BC, and its spread marked the Iron Age. During the medieval period, means were found in Europe of producing wrought iron from cast iron using finery forges. For all these processes, charcoal was required as fuel.

The history of the modern steel industry began in the late 1850s; steel has became a staple of the world's industrial economy. This article is intended only to address the business, economic and social dimensions of the industry, since the bulk production of steel began as a result of Henry Bessemer's development of the Bessemer converter, in 1857. Previously, steel was very expensive to produce, and only used in small, expensive items, such as knives, swords and armor.

Early coal mining in Colorado in the United States was spread across the state. Some early coal mining areas are currently inactive, including the Denver Basin and Raton Basin coal fields along the Front Range. There are currently 11 active coal mines, all in western Colorado.

Segundo is an unincorporated community in Las Animas County, Colorado, United States. It is located west of Trinidad along the Colorado State Highway 12, and has a population of 98.

Adger is an unincorporated crossroads community in Jefferson County, Alabama, southwest of Birmingham.

The Minnequa Steel Works Office Building and Dispensary are historic buildings in Pueblo, Colorado. The main office building served as headquarters of Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. The medical dispensary building served as a medical clinic for treatment of minor injuries and illnesses, and in later years, as both clinic and personnel office for the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. Opened in 1902, the six-room Spanish Mission style building contained waiting, drug, consultation, surgical and storage rooms, in addition to sleeping and office quarters for attending physicians. In 1902, as the company payroll exceeded 5,000 employees, the Dispensary handled an average of seventy-five cases daily. As employee numbers grew, medical staff also began treating families of employees. The building was used as a medical building for mill employees until the early 1990s. The Minnequa Steelworks Office Building, built in 1901, served as company headquarters until the early 1990s. Here, many office functions occurred including purchasing, finance, payroll, engineering, and other administrative functions. The building complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002 and amended to the National Level of Significance of the National Register of Historic Places in 2008. Owned and operated by the Steelworks Center of the West, the medical dispensary building is the home of the Steelworks Museum of Industry and Culture, which opened on January 19, 2007. The museum's exhibits include the local history of coal mining, steel production, railroads, labor, and the impact of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company on the region. The main administration building will serve as the second phase of the Steelworks Museum of Industry and Culture in the coming years.

Steelworks Museum Industrial museum in Pueblo, Colorado

The Steelworks Museum is located in Pueblo, Colorado. Operated by the Steelworks Center of the West, the museum is in the historic Minnequa Steel Works Office Building and Dispensary of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company.

Margam Knuckle Yard is a railway yard in Margam, South Wales, on the South Wales Main Line, operated by DB Schenker Rail (UK). The yard is the major freight yard of the region, handling all of the rail freight movements from Port Talbot Steelworks, and most of the railfreight traffic around South Wales.

The Redstone Coke Oven Historic District is located at the intersection of State Highway 133 and Chair Mountain Stables Road outside Redstone, Colorado, United States. It consists of the remaining coke ovens built at the end of the 19th century by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. In 1990, it was recognized as a historic district and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

John Cleveland Osgood was a self-made man who founded the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company but has been referred to as a robber baron. He also created Redstone, Colorado.

Morley was a town in Las Animas County, Colorado, that existed between 1878 and 1956. The town was located near the summit of Raton Pass and was originally a railroad stop before being developed into a coal mining town by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I). Morley was a CF&I company town for fifty years until 1956 when the mine was closed and the town demolished.

References

1 2 Wyckoff, William (1999). Creating Colorado: The Making of a Western American Landscape, 1860-1940. p. 147.
↑ Whiteside, James (1990). Regulating danger: the struggle for mine safety in the Rocky Mountain coal Industry. University of Nebraska Press. p. 8.

External links

Steelworks Center of the West / Steelworks Museum

Coordinates: 38°14′16″N104°36′45″W / 38.23787°N 104.6124°W / 38.23787; -104.6124

Geographic coordinate system Coordinate system

A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are often chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position and two or three of the numbers represent a horizontal position; alternatively, a geographic position may be expressed in a combined three-dimensional Cartesian vector. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation. To specify a location on a plane requires a map projection.

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[Creating_Colorado-1] 1 2 Wyckoff, William (1999). Creating Colorado: The Making of a Western American Landscape, 1860-1940. p. 147.

[Regulating_danger-2] Whiteside, James (1990). Regulating danger: the struggle for mine safety in the Rocky Mountain coal Industry. University of Nebraska Press. p. 8.