While my fascination with abandoned buildings encompasses a wide genre of locations and places, I find myself most enamored by industrial ruins, specifically the plethora of Rust Belt relics. Steel mills, factories, and blast furnaces are without a doubt the most alluring type of structure to explore, they invoke so much powerful imagery into my imagination and are essentially just giant adult playground slowly corroding away. America today is very much a post-industrial country, however the land still severely scarred with the footprints of forgotten industrial cities, which not only built this country but largely the infrastructure we rely on every day. While the industries these cities and towns provided has longe since collapsed, replaced by better technology or moved into cheaper markets, the physical infrastructure still largely remains. I think it's incredible that entire towns were built around a volatile industry such as steel, with everything a typical town would need being constructed to support the factory workers, from residential houses, to hospitals, schools, police, and so forth. However, in all too many instances, this reliance on a single economic boom, proved to be a fatal mistake, for once the industry moved out, many of these cities spiraled into decay and still remain in such despair today. Many of these towns exist as dark polluted shadows haunted by their former glory and often entwined with negativity, depression, drugs, and crime, with little to no respect given to just how critical these towns were to building the amazing country we have today.
Too often I find myself day dreaming about memorable adventures from years past and one such epic day that always comes to mind was my adventure into the blast furnaces of the Bethlehem Steel Mill in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The furnaces are still around today, although the greater footprint of the former mill site has largely been cleaned up and many of the original Bethlehem Steel structures demolished to make room for the Wind Creek Casino and associated structures. The furnaces themselves have been preserved within all their decaying grandeur and are accessible via a public walkway known as the Hoover-Mason Trestle, which is absolutely worth wild to check out. I was lucky enough to explore the blast furnaces shortly before the casino was built and when the defunct Bethlehem Steel site was what I consider to be the greatest industrial ruin in American history. The size of the original Bethlehem Steel site is truly a mesmerizing thought, encompassing hundreds and hundreds of buildings. While today much of the original footprint has been demolished to make room for the casino, Steel Stacks music stage, and various other modern amenities, it is still possible to envision just how massive and thus critical Bethlehem Steel was to the success of this country.
Often is the case when I explore post industrial Rust Belt towns, I find myself driving through severely dilapidated Main Streets where abandoned row homes, crushed dreams, poverty, drugs, crime, and corruption have replaced the once thriving factories which continue to fade away, easily overlooked along with the very histories they forged. It's often a very macabre experience that always leaves me wondering how? How can such historically critical places in American industrial history just be left behind and forgotten; perhaps it's as simple as not adapting to change, or maybe it's a far deeper rooted problem than I could ever imagine? Thus it becomes easy to characterize such cities and towns simply as failures and everyone who still remains in them as these miscarriages of society, doomed to an inescapable pit stewing with anger, sadness, and helplessness. It's far more difficult to instead see these places for what they once were and just how much they contributed to American society that is taken for granted today and everyday. While I do believe the solution is to adapt and change, I do recognize such a concept is far easier imagined than implemented.
On the flip-side, the City of Bethlehem is the complete opposite of a collapsed Rust Belt town. Bethlehem has embraced the scars of its past industrial heritage and has instead revitalized itself into a wonderful music centric town. Bands can often be heard playing for free on a stage called "Steel Stacks" purposely constructed in front of the ruins of the blast furnaces which are seen as an attractive backdrop illuminated with colorful lights as opposed to a nuisance or eyesore. Every year a massive music festival completely shuts down the heart of the small city and The National Museum of Industrial History was construed within one of the old steel factories. While the fascinating ruins of Bethlehem Steel are ever increasingly being gentrified or simply demolished, for better and for worse, I still find myself continually attracted to Bethlehem for it has managed to revitalize and escape that doom and gloom mindset which has completely engulfed similar towns all across the Rust Belt region. Bethlehem stands out in my mind as a success story that highlights just how resourceful people can be. For sometimes we have to show off our scars and be proud of our past, be reminded that it's okay to fail, for failure can just be a path reimagined into a different type of success. I am forever grateful that I got to explore the city's namesake steel mill before it was revitalized into something the greater population could enjoyer rather than just a hulking, sad ruin. While a whole lot has changed in Bethlehem, even just over the past five years, it is still possible to seek out those post-industrial scars and discover little places that have managed to escape the progress of moving forward, which I think it quite an awesome balance. For to completely erase or cover up our past is a mistake every-time, so to is it to let the past dictate the future.
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