I've lived and worked in Pittsburgh long enough to remember seeing the flaming eruptions from the mills on the south side of the Monongahela, in the early 1980s, when I would drive home from Downtown to Shadyside, then Wilkinsburg. In those days, the J&L furnaces still sat hard by the Parkway East, heading toward Monroeville and beyond.
The Carrie site was dismantled about that time.
Carrie Furnace site is ENORMOUS. The work there required supplying electricity from furnace off-gas (and cleaning that gas), supervising the ore pits (one of the resources for making iron ore), loading the "Larry" cars with coke for the blast furnace. Unloading the iron (from Minnesota via the Great Lakes). Cleaning the channels that held the disgorged ore from the furnace (can't use water, explosion danger).
All jobs: Hot, dirty dangerous, monotonous. And dangerous.
Our guide's description of one such job stays with me:
The top filler.
If you were this guy, you were stationed at the top (mouth, maybe maw would be a better word) of the furnace.
Piles of materials would come up for you to dump in the mix. Limestone, coke, iron.
But, you can't dump it all in at once. You have to swirl it all in, like cake ingredients. If it all goes in at once, the metallurgy goes bad.
Except, the material keeps coming. And coming. And coming.
And so you start off your 12 hour shift conscientously pouring in the ingredients at the top of the circular stack: Limestone at 6 o'clock on the dial. Coke at 9 o'clock. Iron at 12 o'clock. Next round of ingredients (because the ingredients keep coming and the furnace keeps cooking) Limestone at 7 o'clock, Coke at 10 o'clock, Iron at 1 o'clock.
But you are a human Top Filler and tired, and probably you have worked a 12-hour shift anyway and have had one day off, so you can't keep up. So after a while all the ingredients just get dumped in.
After a while the powers-that-be realize that this means the ore is poorer quality so new methods are devised for getting the ingredients to the mouth of the beast. One is a giant cup, full of mix, that rides up the to mouth and dumps in the contents, already mixed.
These mills were hives of innovation, because the jobs required of people were so exhausting and dirty and killing.
These mills also created jobs for thousands of immigrants.
Homestead, McKeesport, Duquesne, Braddock, Rankin and countless other Mon Valley mill towns contributed to America's growth and helped America to victory in World War II and fueled the growth of our economy post-war. (Think refrigerators, washing machines, that nifty Ford Mustang you drove.) My family on my mother's side is rooted in Duquesne in the late 1800s early 1900s. Not in steel, but in business because of it.
These towns all still celebrate their immigrant roots. They may not be what they were once, but they are river towns and will survive and thrive.
One thing I noticed. There are so many sycamore trees here. Sycamores love water. And the site is flat... the ladle car was in standing water, from the rainy weather we've had this summer I guess. But if sycamores mean rain friendly, that means this site is likely to be overtaken by nature sooner rather than later.
