Town Made to Order

Sep 6, 2003

Spectators gathered, in 1908, on new docks at the harbor entrance to Gary, Indiana, peered off to the west, watched as small dots slowly grew in size just off shore. The dots separated, became four distinct vessels, steaming toward the piers jutting out into Lake Michigan. First to arrive was the gunboat Wolverine, followed in turn by the training ship Dorothea, the revenue cutter Tuscarora, and the fourth vessel, the steam vessel E. H. Gary. As the latter neared her dock the Stars and Stripes was run up a flagpole where it flapped in the breeze as the Wolverine loosed a 21-gun salute into the July air. On board the steamer was the reason for all the celebration, 12,00 tons of iron ore. Before the unloading there were speeches from officials standing on the Gary's bridge, including a candidate for the U. S. vice-presidency. It was the final years of the Gilded Age, so we can be sure the oratory and the toasts followed each other in rapid succession. Somebody was sure to have uttered the words, "a new era" and, for better or worse, it was. By the end of the shipping season close to a million tons of raw ore would enter the iron maw of the Gary blast furnaces.

If anyone in that welcoming crowd hadn't known of the guiding force behind this magic city that appeared out of the swamps and dunes, its name and the name of the first cargo carrier was a dead giveaway. It had become evident to United States Steel Corporation president Elbert Gary, sitting in his quietly bustling New York office in the early 1900s, that much of the far-reaching empire under his control was limping along with antiquated equipment, decrepit, rusting machinery that cut into efficiency and, most importantly, profits. Retrofitting existing plants would be hideously expensive and labor-intensive; far better and cheaper in the long run to start from scratch. It had to be along the western Great Lakes, near ore sources and existing factories in the Chicago area. Waukegan was already too congested. Land immediately around Chicago was expensive and carried a heavy tax burden. The answer lay just east of the Illinois-Indiana border. Mile after mile of swamp and sand dunes, practically uninhabited. Parcel by parcel the giant corporation began quietly buying up the needed property. The final acquisitions were made by 1906. 9,000 acres of beachfront property: 7.2 million dollars. A few billion sand fleas: Free. Dune grass and sluggish swamp water: Free. A brick-and-steel cash cow that should never run dry - PRICELESS!!

The science-fiction term 'terra-forming' had not been coined in 1906, but the concept was well understood. Crews began shoving huge sand dunes into inlets along a half mile stretch of lakefront. Part of the winding, east-west Calumet river was straightened and shifted half a mile to the south, acting as a dividing line between the workers' residences and commercial buildings to the south, and the blast furnaces and factories to the north. A grid pattern emerged as building lots were marked off and streets laid down. Running like reinforcing rods through the ruler-straight, criss-crossing, sidewalk-lined roadbeds, two major thoroughfares appeared. They were quite impressive, but there wasn't a lot of imagination put into their naming - Fifth Avenue running east-west, and Broadway running north-south. A twenty-five foot deep canal was gouged away to run through the middle of the industrial area, and piers were run out into the wind-driven surf. The Pittsburgh of the West was on its way.

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(c) 2003 David Minor / Eagles Byte