Forty years and a few days after Black Monday, the day that Youngstown Sheet & Tube suddenly announced the closure of their Campbell works and started the trend of integrated steel mill closures, blast furnaces in the Steel Valley and Ohio Valley continued to fall. The photos below were submitted to this site by people near these mills.
Weirton, WVa. - A very powerful drone shot courtesy of Roger VanGosen showing the No. 4 furnace at Weirton Steel laying in the yard. It looks somebody shot her. This furnace was featured prominently in the multiple Oscar award winning film The Deer Hunter. In it, Robert DeNiro's character looks over his hometown from up on a hill after he returned from Vietnam. A banner that reads "WELCOME HOME MICHAEL" hangs in the foreground, with ol No. 4 in the background.
Image copyright Roger VanGosen
Warren, O. - Demolition is well underway at the Trumbull Cliffs blast furnace at the former Republic Steel Warren works. I can't really say where I got these photos, but am very grateful to the person that took them.This is the last blast furnace standing in the Steel Valley, and at one time was the largest in the world. They already knocked down the ore bridge, cut out the cast house floor, and are busy talking the rest of the cast house down. All of the hand painted signs I attempted to buy out of that cast house are going to the scrap heap. This pisses me off for many reasons.
Ore bridge location.
Cast house
Cast House
Click to enlarge.