October 19, 2024
Local News

Then & Now: Joliet Iron and Steel Company - Joliet

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The Then photograph shows a view of the complex looking southwest from the roof of the old Joliet Correctional Center (Collins Street Prison). The old image includes a view of the Engine House, the hot blast stoves and furnaces Number Three and Four. (Photo courtesy)

Joliet is known as the “City of Steel” because the town was a major steel-producing center for many years.

In the early 1870s, the Joliet Iron and Steel Company was producing iron and steel products. Located on the city’s north side, between Collins Street and the Des Plaines River, stood one of the largest iron and steel manufacturing facilities in the nation.

Between 1869 and 1930, the Joliet Iron and Steel Company employed thousands of Joliet-area residents, most of them immigrants from Poland, Sweden and Slovenia, who worked and produced iron and steel products, including rails for the nation’s growing railroad system.

The plant assumed new ownership numerous times and eventually became part of the Illinois Steel Company, which would eventually become part of U.S. Steel Corporation.

By the 1930s, the operations became unprofitable and the plant’s six major blast furnaces were demolished, leaving only foundations.

In 1989, U.S. Steel donated 45 acres to the Corporation for Open Lands (CorLands), including the foundations of the historic blast furnaces, engine house and other steel-making structures.

In 1998, the Forest Preserve District of Will County opened an interpretive walking trail through the remains of the old structures at the Joliet Iron Works Historic Site along the Illinois and Michigan Canal.

Various stops along the trail include interpretive panels, which tell the story of the large iron and steel plants that once stood there near the canal. Each panel is divided into two sections: one tells the process of steel making, the other tells the story of the people who worked at the plants.