Ensley Works

The Ensley Works was an open-heart steel plant constructed beginning in 1888 along the Louisville and Nashville Railroad west of Birmingham at the newly-developed industrial suburb of Ensley. The works was a joint venture of local investors such as Enoch Ensley with the railroad and the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (TCI) which operated it.

The first heat of steel was tapped on Thanksgiving Day in 1899 and the first load of Ensley steel was shipped to a Connecticut buyer on January 1, 1900. Reports of inexpensive steel being made in the South concerned established operators such as Andrew Carnegie. When former Minnesota Iron president Don Bacon came to Ensley in 1901 to oversee the plan, he characterized the operation, from the mines to finished product, as a "medley of make shifts". By 1906 he estimated that $25 million would be needed to overhaul the plant to meet modern standards of efficient manufacture.

The addition of the Bessemer converter to the plant in 1904 helped increase the quality and quantity of Ensley's steel output. 1904's total production was 155,000 tons. Two years later the plant produced 402,000 tons. By 1907 Bacon had been succeeded by John Topping who was tapped to oversee the necessary capital improvements. The blast furnaces were entirely rebuilt and new open hearths constructed. A second more efficient rail mill was added.

In November 1907, amid swirlings of a Wall Street financial panic, executives of U. S. Steel felt out the position of the White House on whether their acquisition of TCI would merit criticism as an attempt to monopolize steel production. With a crisis at stake without the larger company's investment, President Theodore Roosevelt assured them that he "felt it no public duty" to object to the suggestion. The deal was agreed upon within days. The primary value to the company was the mineral resources of the Birmingham District which were under TCI's control. One executive estimated that the company had purchased $90-100 million worth of coal reserves and infrastructure for their $30 million investment.

U. S. Steel sent George Crawford to oversee TCI's operations and over $30 million in improvements made over the next six years. Crawford reported drastic improvements in quality after only 18 months, reducing the scrap yield of newly-made rail from 40% to 10% while cutting costs from $29 to $29 per ton. In 1912 the Ensley works produced 840,000 tons of steel, by far leading all Southern competitors. It was in that year that the American Steel and Wire Company built the first industrial plant at TCI's newly-planned city of Fairfield (originally called "Corey").

Most of the new Fairfield operations were involved in finishing steel ingots made at Ensley. During World War I wartime demand required the Ensley plant to continue increasing capacity. By 1920 Ensley's furnaces could output 1.25 million tons. By 1945, expanded again during World War II, Ensley was producing 1.57 million tons and, with the post-war demand for building material, had increased capacity to 1.77 million tons by 1959. Nevertheless, the more modern integrated steel making processes at Fairfield began to supplant the open-hearth method used in Ensley. U. S. Steel closed the open hearths in 1975 and closed the last section of the Ensley Works, the melt shop, in 1976.

Furnaces

• Ensley Furnace No. 4 (blown in April 9, 1888)
• Ensley Furnace No. 3 (blown in June 5, 1888)
• Ensley Furnace No. 2 (blown in December 1, 1888)
• Ensley Furnace No. 1 (blown in April 29, 1889)
• Ensley Furnace No. 5 (blown in November 15, 1900)
• Ensley Furnace No. 6 (blown in April 28, 1905)

References

• Warren, Kenneth (2001) Big Steel: The First Century of the United States Steel Corporation, 1901-2001. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: University of Pittsburgh Press. ISBN 0822941600

External links

• Photographs from Ensley Works at modelrailroadforums.com