Rust Belt - Mineral Resources
The United States is blessed with industrial resources. America's broad interior plains are nearly enclosed by zones of metallic mineral concentrations: the Canadian Shield to the north and two linear areas, one extending northeast-southwest (the Appalachian Mountains) and one extending northwest-southeast (the Rocky Mountains). Furthermore, much of these same interior plains are underlain by large deposits of high-quality mineral fuel, especially in the eastern section. In terms of the mineral requirements of heavy industry, then, a relatively small triangular region contains much of what is needed.
Also, the interior portion of America's Manufacturing Core possesses great accessibility resources. Connecting the mineral-rich Canadian Shield and the fuel-rich interior plains, the five Great Lakes--Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario--represent an internal waterway unlike any other in the world. The Great Lakes are interconnected with only two significant changes of elevation.
A small drop of about 6.7 meters between Lake Superior and Lakes Huron and Michigan was overcome by locks at Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, first opened in 1855. The much greater change of elevation between Lakes Erie and Ontario might have been a serious barrier to water transport, but the Welland Canal (first opened in 1829) was built in Ontario to skirt Niagara Falls, and the Erie Canal was constructed (by 1825) in New York to permit some freight to avoid Lake Ontario altogether.
With these exceptions, the lakes offered well over 800 kilometers of inexpensive transportation to early developers of America. Later, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the same cheap transportation was of critical importance to those moving the Shield's iron ore to the coal fields in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Much of the basis for the location of the industrial capacity that developed along the southern margins of the Great Lakes can be attributed to this natural accessibility resource.
Within the interior core, flowing westward from deep within the coal-rich Appalachian region, the Ohio River crosses the interior plains for hundreds of kilometers before joining the Mississippi River. Dozens of tributaries supply the Ohio with its water and provide further accessibility, either directly because they are navigable, too, or less directly because they offer easier routes of land movement through their valleys. Along the western margin of the core region, the Mississippi River and its tributaries provide access from the south and west.
Prior to 1830, the region's urban and industrial development was limited almost entirely to the Atlantic Coast in the ports' immediate hinterlands. European settlement of the trans-Appalachian area consisted of scattered subsistence agriculture and a few urban outposts. Between 1830 and the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War in 1860, population density in the interior increased and agriculture intensified and began to produce a regular surplus, spurring demand for efficient centers of exchange. The foundations for the growth of the region are reflected in the gradual shift of transportation concentration as railroad lines began to be spread across the interior plains.
The major cities of the other, larger portion of America's Manufacturing Core region, the industrial Midwest, have derived their primary character from their location relative to the rich mineral and agricultural resources of the continent's interior. Almost all of the large cities in the western portion of the manufacturing region are located along the Ohio River or one of its tributaries, or along the shores of one of the Great Lakes.
Most important in the development of urban centers in the interior portion of the Manufacturing Core has been the movement of metallic mineral ores from the margins of the Canadian Shield to the coal fields of western Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and the smaller movement of coal in the reverse direction.
Iron ore is mined at the Mesabi range of northern Minnesota and at the Gogebic, Marquette, and Menominee ranges in northern Michigan and Wisconsin. Mesabi ore is now processed into pellets at the deposit site, but for decades unprocessed ore was carried to the southern shores of Lakes Michigan and Erie in large ships designed specially for Great Lakes travel. Pellets and ore are carried to the southern shore of Lake Michigan, to Hammond and Gary in Indiana, where these shipments are met by coal transported north by rail from the large Illinois coal fields. Most of the ore, however, is shipped to Lake Erie ports. From there, it is either carried south, primarily to the steel cities of the Ohio River, or converted to steel in the lakeside cities using coal carried north on the return rail trip from the Appalachian fields.
Of the cities of the interior core, Pittsburgh is the one whose name became synonymous with steel. Located where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers join to form the Ohio River, Pittsburgh was in an excellent position to take advantage of access to both raw materials and downriver markets. The Allegheny and the Monongahela drain the coal-rich margins of the Appalachians, and the Ohio flows along the southern margins of the Agricultural Core and into the Mississippi. As Pittsburgh grew, industries that depend on steel crowded onto the narrow river bottoms to take advantage of proximity to low-cost water transportation. Metal-fabricating industries, machine parts, and other industrial consumers of large quantities of steel located their plants in and around Pittsburgh. Nearby cities also benefited from the powerful pull of steel at Pittsburgh. Youngstown, Canton, and Steubenville in Ohio, Wheeling and Weirton in West Virginia, and New Castle and Johnstown in Pennsylvania shared to some degree in the industrial growth of this region and obtained steel and steel products industries.
Urban-industrial growth did not occur solely at the source region of coal. The iron ore shipped across the lake system had to be transferred to railroads at points along the Lake Erie shore for final movement to the Pittsburgh region.
So unique is this combination of spatial and mineral resources that the Manufacturing Core in the United States is often thought of as this interior territory alone. References to "the industrial Midwest" or "America's industrial heartland" may seek to fire the imagination, but they are geographically incomplete. The American Manufacturing Core includes both the interior core and Megalopolis, the urban region through which the interior has its primary linkage to international commerce.
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