Society for Industrial Archeology, 1400 Townsend Drive, Houghton, MI (2026)

08/24/2026

"From Big Bang to Bloomery: A Natural History of Iron"
Dr. Barret Wood, Michigan State University
Wednesday, Sept 9, 2026 at 5pm Eastern
Free online presentation hosted by SIA's Iron and Steel Interest Group. Zoom information at the end of this message.

Iron has shaped human civilization for millennia, yet its story begins long before the first furnace was lit. This presentation traces the natural history of iron from its cosmic origins to its earliest metallurgical use. Beginning with the formation of the elements in the cosmos and their journey through stardust, we follow iron through the astronomical, geological, and environmental processes that concentrated iron into ores accessible to humans.

Along the way, we explore meteorites, banded iron formations, bog iron, and the remarkable geochemical cycling of iron in soils, wetlands, and groundwater systems. From sulfides to oxides, the iron cycle is driven by redox reactions that govern its movement, accumulation, and transformation.

The first iron smelters learned to harness these processes, enabling practical iron and steel production and the technologies that followed.

Dr. Barret Wessel is an Assistant Professor of Soil Science in the Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences at Michigan State University, where he teaches introductory and advanced courses in soil and environmental science.

His research focuses on soil formation, wetland and subaqueous soils, and the science of teaching and learning. He holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Technology with a concentration in Soil and Watershed Science, and a Graduate Certificate in Historic Preservation, from the University of Maryland.

Join Zoom Meeting
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Meeting ID: 968 9294 9488
Passcode: 522626

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08/17/2026

We have filled the available spots for the 2026 SIA Fall Tour in Altoona, PA. We will post a more detailed update as information becomes available.

08/03/2026

"Coke Making, Part 1: The Evolution of Coking by Making Coke on the Ground through Beehive Coking"
Free online presentation
Wednesday, August 12, 2026 at 5pm Eastern
(zoom link below)
Presented through SIA's Iron and Steel Heritage Forum

A strange rock was known to exist as early as the ancient Greeks and the spread of that knowledge is often attributed to Theophrastus in his History of Stones c.371 BC.

The importance of coke, made from coal, useful for making iron, was not firmly established until the Darbys of Coalbrookdale, England used it as the sole source of fuel in a blast furnace in the early 1700s.

Coke is made by heating coal to eliminate the volatile products found in it. The resulting “char” consists mainly of carbon, but also includes the ash and some of the sulfur which was originally contained within the coal.

Methods of converting coal into coke involve three distinct techniques: coking in pits or piles; coking in beehive ovens; and finally coking in retorts. In this part of the program, we will briefly track methods of coking on the ground, but concentrate here on making coke in beehive ovens. It should be noted here that not all coals a capable of being converted into a useful product for making iron.

Speaker Ken Kobus is a retired third-generation steelworker with over 40 years of service at J&L, LTV and USS. He is an experienced manager of cokemaking and coal chemicals facilities, as well as their maintenance and environmental management. He has a BS in mechanical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh.

Ken’s book, which is the basis of his talk, is City of Steel: How Pittsburgh Became the World’s Steelmaking Capital during the Carnegie Era, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2023, ISBN 153818172X

Ken is also the author of an annotated version of Charles Walker’s 1922 book, Steel…The Diary of a Furnace Worker. He coauthored four books about the Pennsylvania Railroad in the Pittsburgh and Altoona areas with another one in the works. Ken has also written a number of articles for both paper and on-line publications about railroads and steel.

His most recent book just came out: Conway Yard; Keystone of the Pennsylvania Railroad by Ken Kobus, Frank Napoleon and Steve Titchenal

Join Zoom Meeting
Wednesday, August 12, 2026 at 5pm Eastern
https://zoom.us/j/96250118852?pwd=azevhwYkrDlVu54bye2cgLP6sYAeqb.1
Meeting ID: 962 5011 8852
Passcode: 778121

06/29/2026

Make plans to come to Altoona, Pennsylvania, September 24-27 for the 2026 SIA Fall Tour. The tours will be focused on the transportation and industrial history of Huntingdon, Blair and Cambria counties including rail, mining, metal working, and canal heritage. The East Broad Top Railroad will host the first two days for an opportunity to explore America's oldest operating narrow-gauge railroad, described by the Smithsonian Institution as “an incomparable national treasure.” Sites include the EBT Archives, mining heritage exhibits at the Friends of the East Broad Top Museum, the EBT machine shop complex and roundhouse.

The Fall Tour will showcase the technological achievements devised for crossing the Alleghenies and the Eastern Continental Divide from the Pennsylvania Main Line Canal’s Allegheny Portage Railroad to the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Horseshoe Curve. We’ll also travel to the Cambria Iron National Historic Landmark in Johnstown where the Center for Metal Arts will offer a 3,000 lb. steam hammer demonstration in the 1864 Cambria Iron Co. Blacksmith Shop. The weekend will conclude with an optional tour of the remains of the Pennsylvania Mainline Canal, Juniata Division, led by Pennsylvania Canal Society members. Join us in Altoona – the Railroad City – to explore South Central Pennsylvania’s industrial heritage of railroads, ironworks and canals!

More information on the SIA website:
https://www.sia-web.org/sia-2026-fall-tour-altoona-pa-2/

06/28/2026

"Myths about the Homestead Strike and Steel Unionization"
Online presentation, Wednesday, July 22, 2026, 5:00 eastern
SIA Iron and Steel Special Interest Group

The Homestead Strike of 1892 was a violent labor dispute in Homestead, Pennsylvania, where Carnegie Steel Company manager Henry Frick locked out workers following wage disputes, culminating in a deadly battle between strikers and private Pinkerton guards. The strike ended in November 1892 with the sending of Federal troops, crushing the union and significantly weakening organized labor in the steel industry until the 1930s.

It has become a legend, but in reality, it was far from the classic struggle of steel laborers against greedy capitalists as often characterized. Union, in fact, represented only 700 out of 4000 workers. For the managers, it was just as much about control of production as wages. It also had strong undercurrents of Luddite resistance to automation and steel technology. All of this was occurring in a political environment of socialist terrorists, anarchists, Marxists, assassinations, anti-unionism, competition between competing unions, corporate greed, and a divided nation politically.

Speaker Quentin Skrabec holds BS, an MS, and a Ph.D. degrees in metallurgical and manufacturing engineering. He has thirty years of steel management experience, including furnace operations. He has been a manager at National Steel (Weirton), Jessop Steel, Jones and Lauglin, and LTV Steel (Pittsburgh, Chicago, Canton, Cleveland) as well as a joint venture with Sumitomo Steel.

His books on iron and steel include The Pig Iron Aristocracy, Henry Clay Frick: Master of Manufacturing Capitalism, The Metallurgic Age: The Victorian Flowering of Invention and Industrial Science, The Carnegie Boys: The Lieutenants of Andrew Carnegie, and Braddock’s Steelmakers.

He has published two business history encyclopedias for Greenwood (ABC-CLIO), The 100 Most Significant Events in American Business (won National Library Association Best Business Reference in 2015) and The 100 Most Important American Financial Crises.

Join Zoom Meeting
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Meeting ID: 934 8461 3774
Passcode: 879116

06/27/2026

As SIA closes its current journal series and launches the new series, Industrial Heritage, under the editorship of Ted Grevstad-Nordbrock, the SIA Board will establish an Editorial Advisory Board. Members will help the editor identify peer reviewers for manuscripts submitted for publication, develop ideas for theme issues, and recruit authors to submit articles to the journal.

SIA members who would like to volunteer or recommend others to serve on the Editorial Advisory Board are asked contact Fred Quivik ([email protected]) and/or Ted Grevstad- Nordbrock ([email protected]).

06/27/2026

Greetings from Ted Grevstad-Nordbrock
Industrial Heritage Editor

I’m Associate Professor of Preservation and Cultural Heritage in the Dept. of Urban Planning and Development, College of Design, at Iowa State Univ. in Ames. I’ve been at ISU since 2015, and I currently manage the Preservation and Cultural Heritage undergraduate minor and graduate certificate program.

Prior to this I was an historian with the Michigan State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) and before that I spent several years with the Wisconsin SHPO. I hold master’s degrees in architectural history (Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison) and historic preservation planning (Cornell Univ.), as well as a doctorate in urban geography (Michigan State Univ.). My dissertation was entitled “An Analysis of Diverse Gentrification Processes and Their Relationship to Historic Preservation Activity in Three Chicago Neighborhoods.”

Over the past ten years my teaching and research have focused on historic preservation policy and programs and their impact on communities, most notably through gentrification. Recently I’ve returned to my early interests in architecture and the historic built environment. A 2022 Fulbright Scholarship with the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research in Oslo allowed me to establish research connections in Scandinavia—a region of interest to me. I presented a paper at the SIA Minneapolis conference on the adaptive reuse of industrial sites along Oslo’s Aker River and earlier this year gave a talk on Marktown, Indiana, at the TICCIH conference in Kiruna, Sweden.

My roots are in Chicagoland, but my parents were both Dept. of Defense civilians and I spent many years abroad in Scotland and West Germany. It was in Europe that I first became interested in industrial architecture—in the works of Hans Poelzig, Peter Behrens, and other designers from the interwar period. I also developed an interest in Cold War heritage at that time. Although I now call Iowa home, my extended family lives in the Calumet Region of northwest Indiana. Regular visits there have rekindled a longstanding interest in industrial landscapes.

My wife and I live in Ames with our son, and our daughter attends college in Minnesota.

I look forward to hearing from you to strengthen our new journal! Reach out to me ate [email protected] or [email protected]

Ted

06/27/2026

SIA Announces New Journal Series

The Society for Industrial Archeology has announced plans to terminate its original journal series, "IA: The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology," and launch a new journal series titled "Industrial He¬ritage." SIA leadership provided two main reasons for the change: 1) IA had fallen behind to the point that it did not seem practical to catch up with the calendar again, and 2) increasingly feedback that the word “archeology” presents an inaccurate impres¬sion that the field is quite narrow in scope.

Although members who have worked in the field of industrial archeology are not encumbered by that impression, the SIA board desires to present a public face that indicates the breadth and welcome of our field.

The SIA will publish two more issues of IA to close out the current series. Vol. 46, no. 1, of IA was published earlier this year, and IA editor Steve Walton indicates that the final issue, Vol. 46, no. 2, should be published soon. The SIA has signed an agreement with Iowa State University’s Dept. of Urban Planning and Development to host the work of Dr. Ted Grevstad-Nordbrock, who will be the editor of our new journal. Information about the new editor and a new editorial advisory board are announced separately on this page.

The inaugural issue of Industrial Heritage will feature articles by authors reflecting on where they see the field headed in the future and how the work of the Society has contributed to their efforts, both professional and avocational. If you would like to contribute an article to help articulate the breadth and scope of our field, feel free to contact SIA leadership ([email protected]) or Dr. Grevstad-Nordbrock ([email protected]) to discuss your topic.

06/02/2026

CORRECTION - Date is Wednesday, June 17

Online presentation: History of Kaiser Steel’s Eagle Mountain Iron Mine, Riverside County, California

The Eagle Mountain Mine produced magnetite-hematite ore from contact-metasomatic deposits in Riverside County, from 1948 to 1983. 80 million tons of upgraded ore were shipped, providing the major ore feed to Kaiser Steel’s works at Fontana, the largest steel works in the western U.S.

The mine was a greenfield development, requiring development of a company town of 4,000 residents, a new water supply, and construction of 52 miles of new rail line. It formed one part of a sprawling infrastructure network that supported the Fontana works, the establishment of which was fostered by the outbreak of World War II.

Fred Barnard is a retired hard-rock exploration geologist, with geology degrees from UC Berkeley and the University of Colorado at Boulder. He spent 45 years in base and precious metals exploration worldwide, for International Nickel Company and Anaconda Minerals, and as an independent consultant. His first exposure to Eagle Mountain was as an undergraduate summer hire in 1961, attached to the Engineering Department. Currently he resides in Golden, Colorado, and is a member of the Facebook group “Eagle Mountain Refugees”.

Wednesday, June 17, 2026 at 5pm Eastern
https://zoom.us/j/92648255244?pwd=9jRQRdkscZqhhYUdukH8M5TzLkGbBR.1
Meeting ID: 926 4825 5244
Passcode: 673639

05/11/2026

Iron & Steel Heritage Forum Talk
Dr. Samuel Holleran - "Scattered Steel: The Afterlives of the World Trade Center"
Wednesday, May 13, 2026
5 p.m. Eastern (US & Canada)
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In the years since September 11th, scores of books focused on the 9/11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan have appeared. This project examines a different form of memorialization: the World Trade Center steel sent out from Ground Zero to every U.S. state and 10 countries overseas. Over 1,800 steel fragments have been distributed and worked into memorials. Hundreds of these local memorials were completed in the lead up to the 10th- and 20th anniversaries, and several new ones continue to appear each year. These memorials are both an invocation of millennia-old reliquaries, and a new D.I.Y. style of commemoration adapted for the U.S.’s sprawling communities. This presentation will explore the creation of the WTC, the curation of damaged steel for use in investigations and memorials, and the artists and craftspeople who helped to shape memorials across the globe.

Samuel Holleran is a researcher and public artist who has worked with design firms, universities, and nonprofits in North America, Australia, and Europe. His writing on cemeteries, parks, and equitable urbanism has appeared in numerous publications, and he has launched several major creative projects, often in collaboration with community-based organizations. He is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Urban Design at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia, focused on democratic practices in memorial making.

Zoom call details

https://zoom.us/j/98866826235?pwd=JjPOsmIhBWMUMSHx8izqX2hb1XV6a4.1

Meeting ID: 988 6682 6235
Passcode: 807938

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