Rust undermines the decade old graffiti on the steel bin.
history under ground
rivets
In the middle of Electric Steel, dust collector vents cross-cross out of sight.
Looking down the breakwater from the top of the lighthouse. In the haze, you can see the world’s largest iron ore docks in Allouez Bay.
The dock is still lit at night and it casts shadows over the rust-welded ore doors.
I believe this is the push car, meaning it would push the charge in the oven out the opposite side into the train car.
Fly ash, kicked up by downdrafts, rise again up the smokestack that is the signature feature of the plant. It’s a steel top hat.
The final ball mill in the Chain O’ Mines concentrator. Behind it was a bucket of steel balls.
A huge vent looks like it built in a hurry. There was actually very little in the way of bits of machinery left over… I am guessing almost anything of value was scrapped in the 1990s.
In the mid-2000s, Peavey sealed the spaces between their Electric Steel Elevator bins. What they unwittingly created was a graffiti time capsule. “Impeach Bush”.
The water tower no doubt made good scrap after it hit the ground.
This is part of the oldest section of factory, one that hasn’t had a roof in a long time and all usable equipment has been extracted. The machines pictured would spin sliced beets in boiling water… it was a sealed system before someone cut holes on sides of each unit.
Rivets are sexy, and this old machine has more than a fair share.
Considering the side of Boiler #3’s firebox, where it meets the boiler (between the cylinders). The top piece is where the exhaust is sucked into the chimney, one chimney for each pair of boilers.
I wonder how sheltered workers on this mid-level catwalk that follows the ore chutes is in storms. Note the chunks of concrete stuck in the catwalk grates–the pockets (right) are falling apart.
Electric Steel’s bins reflect the sunset.
Christmas lights from the time Island Station was an art studio lean against a rusty boiler.
Looking through the trestle toward the ghost town.
The superstructure for the sea-leg skyways serves no purpose now… the offices are bricked up, too. Why?
Two steel hoppers supported by counterweights and springs, which were used to weigh incoming grain loads before being deposited in the silos beneath this floor. Garner is another way to say “big measuring tank”, if you were wondering. I fell in love with all the tubes and chutes on this floor.
These copulas made the iron for casting.
Part of the Pillsbury tunnel that brought water back to the Mississippi River.
This mean-looking thing had a purpose, probably, but that function has been lost to decades of expansion.
The turbine hall sported a beautiful Whiting gantry crane.
Holes were cut into the floor to extract equipment from the basements. it was interesting to see the I-beams extending through all the levels of Studebaker.
A heavy steel device locks the anchor up.
The whole smelter ran on gravity… elevating the various raw materials and working with them until at the bottom of the furnace, copper poured out.
This is the crane that would be used to lower extra-heavy bits of copper ore into the fire of the furnace.
Kate in the crow’s next… very shaky by the time she got to it.
A staircase threads between the top floor and the sluices, which are in the middle of the dredge-mill.
The beet juice was boiled down to make a syrup, which would be drained down the trough to the crystalizers.
Standing next to the now-demolished records room.