Pennsylvania Steel Company

The original company was established in late 1865 by: J. Edgar Thomson, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Samuel Morse Felton Sr., recently retired president of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, and Nathaniel Thayer III of the Baldwin Locomotive Works.

Felton, named president in January 1866, chose the 100-acre site of modern-day Steelton, Pennsylvania to build the first steel mill, purchasing land from Henry A. and Rudolph F. Kelker after obtaining the Bessemer license from Burden Iron Works in Troy, New York.

[1] Alexander Lyman Holley, the steel pioneer who first brought this process to America, was chosen to build the mill, and mansion for Felton, which was completed in 1867 along the banks of the Susquehanna River and next to the Pennsylvania Canal, and became operational on May 15, 1868.

[2] It consisted of blast furnaces and a Bessemer process mill.

The company was acquired by Bethlehem Steel in 1917 and, by 1960, the blast furnaces were closed.