38 Business View Magazine - July 2016
Gary, Indiana
The steel city rebounds
“Steel City” - that’s Gary, Indiana’s enduring nickname.
That’s because Gary is a city whose fate and fortune
has always been tied to steel. Indeed, this town on the
shore of Lake Michigan about 30 miles south of Chi-
cago was actually founded by the United States Steel
Corporation in 1906 and named after the company’s
chairman, Elbert Henry Gary. The Elbert H. Gary was
the name of the first boat to deliver ore and limestone
when steel production began in 1908, and for many
years thereafter, the Gary Works on the southern-most
tip of the Great Lake was the world’s largest steel mill.
For decades, the steel town of Gary flourished - par-
ticularly during America’s post-World War II expansion,
with big steel employing upwards of 30,000 workers.
But like any company town is wont to do, Gary crashed
along with the very industry that made it; the one that
nurtured its economy and swelled its population. Since
the city’s peak in 1960, when Gary’s population was
178,000, it has lost more than half its citizenry over
