It operated for more than a century in various forms, but there’s something timeless about the giant headframe standing silent in a field.
history under ground
The Midwest
Centennial Copper Mine
Champion Paper
Hamilton, OH
The Champion Paper Mill opened in 1893 and closed in 2012. It was Ohio’s biggest paper mill, now it’s the emptiest. Take a page from the pulp belt, fire up your iPad, and see what a 50 acre industrial graveyard looks like.
City Methodist Church
Gary, IN
Gary’s sad story is written on the payrolls of US Steel. When the mill modernized there were massive layoffs, as a result this grand gothic church’s congregation fell from 1,700 to 100. It closed in 1975.
Clark Equipment
Buchanan, MI
Buchanan was a company town unwilling to grow with its company. Then, after almost 100 years, that company left. How a rust belt city put on–then taken off–the proverbial map. Michigan edition.
Cramer Tunnel
Northern Minnesota
Cramer Tunnel connected LTV Steel’s taconite mine and concentrator with its ore dock at Taconite Harbor. It served from 1957 to 2001, when LTV declared bankruptcy for the last time.
Daisy & The East End Mills
Superior, WI
Daisy Rolling Mill was one of many flour mills built in the 1890s in an area then known as the East End Milling District, but it alone survived a devastating fire in 1914. It was the last of its kind in the Twin Ports when Peavey closed it in the 1970s.
Detroit Harbor Terminal Warehouse
Detroit, MI
Where I come from, the word “warehouse” is usually preceded by “just another,” but Detroit is a place where you can find anything, even the status quo, neglected on a street corner…
DMIR Dock Five
Duluth, MN
On your left you see Dock 6, retrofitted with conveyor belts, swarming with hard men and cold trains, bathed in orange light and smelling of taconite, oil, and sweat. On the right is a stripped, dark, empty, motionless chunk of steel jutting into Lake Superior, an island in so many ways. Read on to find out where the good days went.
DMIR Roundhouse and Railworks
Two Harbors, MN
Climbing that ladder let me see through the steam, by the orange light of the sunset dumping through the sooted skylights like the shop lights on the dead crane. It had been a while since it lifted a locomotive off its chasis, but the smell of grease was still strong enough to lubricate my sinuses
Draining Zenith City
Duluth, MN
The underground history of some of Duluth’s most notable sewers, drains, and substreet creeks.
Dry Dock Engine Works
Detroit, MI
What do steam engines, Henry Ford, and shipbuilding have in common? Sure, Detroit, but let’s be specific–I give you the Dry Dock Engine Works, a Detroit relic about to go through yet another overhaul…