Sparrows Point, Maryland facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Sparrows Point, Maryland
|
|
|---|---|
 Sparrows Point, Maryland
Location in Maryland
Sparrows Point, Maryland
Location in the United States
|
|
| Country |  United States |
| State |  Maryland |
| County |  Baltimore |
| Time zone | UTC-5 (Eastern (EST)) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC-4 (EDT) |
| ZIP codes |
21219
|
| GNIS feature ID | 591325 |
Sparrows Point is an industrial area in Baltimore County, Maryland, United States. It is an unincorporated community, meaning it is not a separate town or city but part of the larger county. It is located right next to Edgemere.
Sparrows Point was once famous for a huge industrial complex. This complex was owned by Bethlehem Steel and was known for making steel and building ships. In the middle of the 20th century, it was the biggest steel mill in the world! Today, the old steel mill and shipyard area has a new name: Tradepoint Atlantic. This area is being cleaned up and rebuilt to become one of the largest ports on the East Coast of the United States. Now, Sparrows Point is home to many large businesses. These include places where goods are stored and sent out, like those run by Under Armour, Amazon, Home Depot, Volkswagen, and McCormick & Company.
The Story of Sparrows Point
Sparrows Point was originally a marshy area. It was home to Native American tribes. Around 1652, a man named Thomas Sparrow Jr. was given this land. His son, Solomon Sparrow, built a home there and called it "Sparrow's Nest."
In the 1700s, other families moved to the area. They farmed the land, grew crops, and built homes. Some wealthy people from Baltimore also owned land here. Sparrows Point stayed mostly rural until 1887. That's when an engineer named Frederick Wood saw that the marshy inlet would be a great deep-water port. This was perfect for the Pennsylvania Steel Company. The families who owned the land were not eager to sell their peach orchards. But they were eventually convinced to do so.
After World War II, many people from rural areas moved to Sparrows Point. They came from the Southern and Appalachian states. These people moved to work at the Bethlehem Steel plant. Many workers came from farming areas and mining towns in West Virginia and Central Pennsylvania.
The Rise and Fall of Steel Production
Steel was first made at Sparrows Point in 1889. This was done by the Maryland Steel Company. This company was a part of the Pennsylvania Steel Company.
The 20th Century Steel Giant
In 1916, the Bethlehem Steel Corporation bought the mill. The steel made here was used in famous structures. It became girders in the Golden Gate Bridge. It was also used for cables in the George Washington Bridge. The mill was very important for making war supplies during World War I and World War II. Four different railroads served the mill. These included the Western Maryland and the Pennsylvania.
In the mid-1950s, the plant was huge. It had 10 blast furnaces. It could make 8.2 million tons of steel every year. This made the Sparrows Point plant the largest steel mill in the world at that time. It stretched about 4 miles (6.4 km) long. About 30,000 workers were employed there.
Most of the iron ore used at the plant came by ship. It was imported from mines in South America and Labrador. Limestone and coal came from Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and West Virginia by train. Steel was made in 35 open hearth furnaces. It was then shaped into ingots. These ingots were heated again and rolled into long products like pipes and rebar. They were also rolled into sheets and plates. The plant also had special lines for galvanizing and tinplating steel.
Over the next few decades, the steel industry changed. More steel was imported from other countries. Also, new ways of making steel, like using oxygen furnaces and recycling scrap metal, became popular. The old open-hearth steelmaking process at Sparrows Point took a lot of time and labor. Because of these changes, the use of the Sparrows Point complex began to decline in the 1970s and 1980s.
From 1984 to 1986, there was an effort to make the plant more modern. They installed a basic oxygen furnace (BOF) and a continuous caster. However, these changes were not enough to save the plant or Bethlehem Steel.
Sparrows Point in the 21st Century
In 2005, the Sparrows Point plant was bought by Mittal Steel. This happened when Mittal Steel bought International Steel Group, which was the company that took over after Bethlehem Steel went bankrupt.
In March 2008, Mittal Steel sold the plant to a Russian company called Severstal for $810 million. By 2008, the amount of steel Sparrows Point could make had dropped.
In 2012, the Sparrows Point steel mill was bought by Ira Rennert's Renco Group. This made Renco the fifth owner in ten years. RG Steel, a part of Renco, ran the plant. But it went bankrupt on May 31, 2012.
The Sparrows Point steel mill was then bought by Hilco Trading in August 2012. Another company, Nucor, bought parts of the cold mill. Nucor took apart the cold mill in 2012 and 2013. They planned to use its parts for their other steel mills.
In September 2014, a company called Sparrows Point Terminal, LLC (SPT) bought the 3,100-acre (1,300 ha) property. SPT made agreements with the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) and the EPA. SPT agreed to clean up the environment at the site.
SPT set up a $43 million trust fund and gave MDE a $5 million letter of credit. This was to make sure the cleanup work would be finished. SPT also agreed to give the EPA $3 million for more offshore investigation and cleanup if needed. Government and business leaders were very happy about this. They saw it as a positive turning point for Sparrows Point. The Maryland Secretary of the Environment said the agreements provided a "clear path to completion" for the cleanup. The Baltimore County Executive said that "thousands of family-supporting jobs" would return to Sparrows Point. One of SPT's leaders said their plan was to turn the site into "one of the largest ports on the East Coast."
In September 2018, Amazon opened a large distribution center there. This is part of the Tradepoint Atlantic industrial complex. In 2020, Amazon opened a second center nearby. In 2023, it was announced that the US Department of Transportation would give $47.4 million. This money will help turn the old steel mill site into a place to build parts for offshore wind turbines. It will be called Sparrows Point Steel.
Shipbuilding at Sparrows Point
The Sparrows Point Shipyard was a major place for building and fixing ships. The Maryland Steel Company started the shipyard in 1889. Its first ship was delivered in 1891. Bethlehem Steel Corporation bought the shipyard in 1917. In the mid-20th century, Bethlehem Steel Shipbuilding (BethShip)'s Sparrows Point yard was one of the busiest shipbuilders in the United States. It delivered 116 ships between 1939 and 1946.
In the 1970s, Bethlehem Steel spent millions of dollars to improve the shipyard. This made it one of the most modern shipbuilding places in the country. They built a very large graving dock. This allowed them to build huge supertankers. These tankers could be up to 1,200 feet (370 m) long.
Bethlehem Steel faced many money problems in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1997, they sold the Sparrows Point yard to Baltimore Marine Industries Inc. This was part of a plan to try and fix their company, but it didn't work. Baltimore Marine used the site to repair and refurbish ships. But in 2003, Baltimore Marine Industries also went bankrupt.
The Sparrows Point shipyard complex was sold at an auction in 2004 to Barletta Industries Inc. Barletta is now trying to redevelop the site. They plan to use it as a business and technology park. They also hope to start building ships again on some parts of the site. They want to use the modern graving dock that was added in the 1970s.
The Company Town
The steelmaking complex at Sparrows Point once included a company town. This town was planned in the 1890s for the thousands of workers at Maryland Steel. It had company stores, churches, and homes. Larger homes were for managers, and rowhouses were for other employees. By the 1930s, during the Great Depression, about 9,000 people lived in the company town.
As more people came to work in the 1910s, workers also traveled from nearby communities. These included Dundalk and Baltimore City. The Pennsylvania Railroad ran passenger trains from Baltimore in the early years. Baltimore's electric trolley service also had a fast line to the steel mill and shipyard.
The company town was taken down in 1973. However, the nearby unincorporated community of Edgemere still includes the Sparrows Point area. Sparrows Point High School is also still there today.
|
