But it probably didn’t come as a shock for many. And, it wasn’t just the end of the factory, it was the end of an era in the Lehigh Valley. The photo of those men at Furnace C was taken on Novemthe last day of operations at Bethlehem Steel in Pennsylvania. This photo and accompanying captions from an information placard on the end of the Hoover-Mason Trestle put a human face on this massive abandoned steel plant: Now we’re looking back in the direction of where this journey began at the Visitor Center:ĭid you know the song “God Bless America” was played when Bethlehem Steel snuffed out the last heat from the basic oxygen furnace? Walk a little further along the Hoover-Mason Trestle and you reach the other end of SteelStacks. And it’s also teeming with life throughout the year, as this informational placard explains: The Hoover-Mason Trestle provides a feast for the eyes of photographers who want to get up close to the abandoned Bethlehem Steel factory. Crazy… I wonder what it was like working down there:Īnd check out this adjacent narrow-gauge railroad along the Hoover-Mason Trestle: Now we’re looking down into the bowels of the cathedral-like blast furnace structure. Aside from SteelStacks, the Bethlehem Steel legacy is quietly fading away into America’s past. But after closing the steel plant there in 1995, the company went defunct in 2003. īethlehem Steel was once one of the largest employers in Eastern Pennsylvania. Once the home plant of Bethlehem Steel, the second largest steel manufacturer in the nation, the site has been reborn through music and art, offering more than 1,000 concerts and eight different festivals annually. SteelStacks is a 10-acre campus dedicated to arts, culture, family events, community celebrations, education and fun. Here’s everything you want to know about visiting and enjoying SteelStacks in Bethlehem, PA… While SteelStacks is a popular tourist destination enjoyed by history buffs and photographers, it’s also the backdrop for concerts, weddings, art festivals, and many other fun community events and activities. If you’re quiet enough, you can almost see and hear the ghosts of thousands of men and women proudly operating the red-hot machinery.Ī visit to SteelStacks transports you through a serene, haunting, amazing journey into the Lehigh Valley’s manufacturing past - a time and place in American history that so many still pine to see resurrected. Today, the blast furnaces are cold and the steel mill is silent - but the story of the Bethlehem Steel company is amazing. It’s pretty fascinating, walking up along the massive blast furnaces that still stand on the site today, to think about how important this place once was to building the America we know today.Īt one time, more than 31,000 people worked here. Yes, Bethlehem Steel was one of the nation’s great bridge and ship builders!
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