Morgan Park (Duluth)

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Morgan Park is a neighborhood in Duluth, Minnesota.

Arbor Street / 88th Avenue West serves as a main arterial route in the community.

Notes==

Morgan Park is 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 not only built by, but also ran by the U.S Steel Corporation until 1933, when it was 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), K-12 school, and even its own police and fire department. Eventually the steel plant declined and was shut down in phases with the last of the facilities closing in 1981. The historic nature of the community is still alive.

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 a 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. The town proprietor, actually known as the Morgan Park Company, a direct subsidiary of Minnesota Steel Company who operated the steel plant, was 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 in a generally conservative and well kept manner. Failure to do so, and the Morgan Park Company would accomplish the task(s) for you and deduct accordingly from your paycheck.

Morgan Park's Industry - The Duluth Works

The Duluth Works steel and cement plants, and Morgan Park itself, were not the direct result of a vast expanding industrial empire in the United States at the turn of the century in this area, but more in part, they were leverage in a "gentleman's agreement" between the United States Steel Corporation and the State of Minnesota. During the early 1900s, the Minnesota Legislature gave thought of imposing a hefty ore tax on every ton of ore that left the vast deposits on the Iron Range. No other company would be hurt more by this than the newly incorporated U.S. Steel. So in a trade for producing some finished materials within the state that supplied the most iron ore to the company, the company built the manufacturing complex at Duluth. The idea was that coal and other raw materials could be hauled up the Lakes to Duluth in their otherwise empty cargo holds while en route for the iron ore they hauled to the mills on the lower lakes. In fact, many speculators thought that Duluth would become a massive manufacturing center, second only to Pittsburgh or Chicago, but these speculations 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 11th, 1916 and 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 as part of a restructuring effort by the parent company to deal with the Great Depression and market problems which were associated with it.

AS&W would remain the plant's main operating parent under the U.S. Steel imperial umbrella until 1964, when another 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, while the merchant and wire mills utilized 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 and was used in promotions in the Twin Ports area to entice consumers to "Look for the missing fourth barb" on the nail to in fact 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 only produced within the U.S. Steel empire solely at the Duluth Works, a unique designation within the company itself. The wire mesh product, created in 1954, (along with its Universal Atlas Cement plant) was also instrumental in the building of the ICBM missile silos of the midwest for the Strategic Air Command of the United States Air Force.

Closing and Fate

The fate of the Duluth Works was to be similar of other plants during the early 1970s to the mid 1980's. The story was the same 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 now victims of the cutting torches. The dumping of foreign steel in the United States was partly to blame, but it was also because the Duluth Works wasn't substantially modernized throughout the years with more modern Basic Oxygen Furnaces (BOF) to replace its outdated open hearth technology that was introduced at the plant at its construction, and was located in a market where other plants could meet its own output and demand. The Duluth Works, despite being an integrated steel maker, only utilized 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. This fact, in conjunction with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agencey (MPCA) and U.S. Steel's own Board of Directors, were to eventually spell doom for the 3,500 workers at the plant. After years of debate and speculation, in June 1970 the MPCA amid growing environmental concerns, gave U.S. Steel three years to conduct a study of its harmful emissions at the Duluth Works and a two years follow up window to implement corrective actions. Rather than conduct the studies, U.S. Steel decided in September 1971 to close the "hot side" of the Duluth Works. This meant that all iron and steel making productions at the facilities of the blast furnaces, pig iron casters and open hearths would cease. 1,600 steel workers were out of a job. The cold side operations were to continue, using brought in steel from Gary or other U.S Steel plants, to make rod and wire products. This continued until October 1973, when the cold side shut down, leaving only the coke plant, the cement plant and several other smaller operations at work 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 and a mere 200 employees still at Morgan Park. Finally in 1979, the MPCA clamped down on the emissions of the coke plant as well, and in 1981 the coke plant, the last of U.S. Steel's vast grip on Morgan Park and the city of Duluth, was closed.

This did not relieve U.S. Steel from 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 Agencey placed the site on the U.S. Superfund list in 1984. That year, buildings were inspected and harmful materials removed and in 1988, razing and demolition of the once massive complex began. The last of the buildings was brought down in 1997. Today the land of the former steel and cement plants sit primarily vacant. Although the cement plant has been deemed as "cleaned" by U.S. Steel and the city of Duluth, the former steel plant site of the Duluth Works 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 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 and has made preparations on the land to move forward with the plan and the City of Duluth's Duluth Economic and Development Authority, or DEDA, using up to 40 acres of the former industrial plant. After almost 30 years, some activity will return to Morgan Parks industrial plain.