As we continue to look at Beaver County Memories, we turn our attention to “industrial strength” memories.  This segment is part of a special series showcasing the manufacturing sector. Beaver County Memories brought to you by St. Barnabas.

Beaver County is well known for making steel.  Behemoth mills bearing the names of Jones and Laughlin, Crucible and Babcock and Wilcox became legendary for their contributions to the local economy as well as keeping the world supplied with top quality products, as only Beaver County workers could produce. But there were other things that were made in Beaver County.  Everything from fine china to chocolates, to bricks to cork and many other things were created by local residents through the years.

The self proclaimed “World’s largest producer of wrought iron products” was located right here in Beaver County. For a span of around forty years, hundreds of employees produced amazing quantities of wrought iron pipes and other things at the A.M. Byers Company in Ambridge.  Before plastic, and before copper, many of the water pipes that existed in homes, businesses and municipal infrastructure was made out of wrought iron.  Many older buildings still have the classic, heavy, wrought iron plumbing. It was durable and raw material to make the product was plentiful.

Memories of driving along Duss Avenue in Ambridge and seeing the bright orange glow given off from a Bessemer Converter furnace used in the process to melt and refine raw material into usable molten steel and iron, are common.  The Bessemer Converter was located outside and not far from the highway.  It became somewhat of a local attraction, particularly at night when the skies would also be colored with multi colored smoke.

Up through the 1960’s, at times up to around five hundred people made their way into the sprawling A.M. Byers plant along Duss Avenue to form and reportedly create more wrought iron products annually than what was produced by all other plants in the United States added together.  The Ambridge facility was built and began operations in 1930. A.M. Byers was already in the steel and wrought Iron manufacturing business at that stage of the game, having opened a plant on Pittsburgh’s South Side in 1863.  At one point in time, A.M. Byers had five sites producing  their signature wrought iron items throughout the United States.  In 1969, A.M. Byers closed The Pittsburgh and Ambridge plants due to falling demand for wrought iron.  The remaining company assets were sold to Goodyear Tire and Rubber a short time after that.  A few of the original A.M. Byers buildings are still standing and now house other enterprises.  In Addition, two giant smokestacks adorned with A.M. Byers vertical lettering on the outside stand tall and remain a testament and memorial to the company.

This “industrial strength” Beaver County memory has been presented by St. Barnabas.  Archived transcripts of this and other Beaver County Memories can be found at Beaver County Radio dot com. Tune in everyday for another Beaver County Memory on WBVP, WMBA, 99.3 F.M., and online through google play and iTunes apps, and Alexa smart devices.