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Dumping slag at Bethlehem Steel in 1994

The was a town near Pittsburgh that produced more steel that Pittsburgh mills but never got the publicity for it. If the road/highway network had included that town it would have been more famous than Pittsburgh. One of the mills produced nearly all the pipe used in the world to drill and transport oil and its byproducts.

The sky would glow red at night as the steel poured into ingot molds. The slag from the mills was hauled and poured as in this video to fill in small valleys that later became real estate for shopping malls. Today the mills are gone as well as the malls where many a hard earned dollar was spent.

Here's a view of a slag pour as shown at a Bethlehem Steel site far east of the Pittsburgh area:

In 2001, Bethlehem Steel filed for bankruptcy. In 2003, the company's remnants, including its six massive plants, were acquired by the International Steel Group.

In 2007, the Bethlehem property was sold to Sands BethWorks, and plans to build a casino where the plant once stood were drafted. Construction began in fall 2007; the casino was completed in 2009. Ironically, the casino had difficulty finding structural steel for construction, thanks to a global steel shortage and pressure to build Pennsylvania's tax-generating casinos. 16,000 tons of steel was needed to build the $600 million complex.

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