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From Forging America: The story of Bethlehem Steel

With its bid to acquire Youngstown blocked, Bethlehem decided to build its own plant to take on U.S. Steel in the lucrative Midwest market. Construction of the $400 million plant in Burns Harbor, Ind., had begun in 1962 on a 3,300-acre site on the banks of Lake Michigan, 30 miles southeast of Chicago.

Sprouting from a piece of land nearly twice the size of Bethlehem's flagship property, Burns Harbor would be an integrated mill that could increase The Steel's capacity by 6 million to 10 million tons a year. Being integrated meant that the plant contained the entire steelmaking process, from ore to finished steel, all on the same property.

While Steel officials touted the plant as the future of the company, it met with opposition in Indiana, where residents protested the plant's location in the middle of the scenic Dunes, the miles of beaches, sand dunes, bogs, wetlands and woodland forests along the Indiana National Lakeshore.

It was also met with mixed reviews back in Bethlehem, where workers and residents began to question the company's commitment to the Lehigh Valley.

It is encouraging that the company has both the confidence in the future of this nation's economy and the resources to undertake such a gigantic expansion, a Morning Call editorial stated in 1962. There are also regrets it was necessary to bypass the area in which the company has its deepest roots.

But The Steel was taking its investment — roughly $500,000 a day during construction — where the market was, and there was no question it was the Midwest. The Burns Harbor plant would give the company direct access to the automotive industry and the Chicago building markets.

Burns Harbor primarily was designed to make cold-rolled sheet steel, the product used for everything from automobile bodies to television chassis to refrigerators.

The location of Burns Harbor in the Great Lakes region meant the plant could get exceptional ore from Minnesota and, via the St. Lawrence Seaway, from Labrador, Canada. Almost next door to Burns Harbor is Gary, Ind., home of U.S. Steel's major plant. The Great Lakes was the place to be.

Bethlehem's largest plant would be on a waterway approachable by cargo ships, eliminating the need to haul materials from the ports by rail. Transportation costs — and particularly those for rail shipments — were becoming costly for landlocked plants such as the one in south Bethlehem.

It actually cost us less to ship ore from Africa to the ports of Philadelphia than it did to move it by rail from Philadelphia to the Bethlehem plant, says Robert Wilkins, who started with Bethlehem Steel in 1954 and became chief financial officer in 1982. Being on Lake Michigan was a huge savings.

Burns Harbor began producing steel in November 1964, touching off four consecutive years in which The Steel's raw steel production pushed past 20 million tons and helping the company net a half billion dollars in profit in the final half of the decade.

No one could have imagined then, but Burns Harbor would be the last integrated plant built in the United States

From International Steel Group
 * 2003 - ISG acquired the Bethlehem Steel Corporation and U.S. Steel’s Gary plate mill.
 * 2005 - Completed merger with Mittal Steel on April 5.

Mittal On 25 June 2006, Mittal Steel decided to merge with Arcelor, with the new company to be called Arcelor Mittal Arcelor Mittal.