Jones & Laughlin Steel Company

The Jones and Laughlin Steel Company began as the American Iron Company, founded in 1852 by Bernard Lauth and B. F. Jones, a few miles (c 4 km) south of Pittsburgh along the Monongahela River. Lauth's interest was bought in 1854 by James H. Laughlin. The first firm to bear the name of Jones and Laughlin was organized in 1861 and headquartered at Third & Ross in downtown Pittsburgh.Katharine Hepburn's maternal uncle, Frank Garlinghouse, was a longtime engineer for J&L Steel.

Originally producing only iron, the enterprise began the production of steel in 1886. Over the ensuing 60 years, the company expanded its facilities and its operations along both sides of the Monongahela River and along the Ohio River. The Hot Metal Bridge across the Monongahela River was built to connect the blast furnaces (making pig iron) on one side of the river with the open hearth furnaces (making steel) on the other side of the river. In 1905, a new plant was begun at Aliquippa, Pennsylvania. The company also owned coal mines in western Pennsylvania in its early days, including some reached by an incline in Pittsburgh's South Side which connected to the railroad over the bridge adjacent to the Hot Metal Bridge. Other mines were along the nearby Becks Run, also directly connected by railroad. The incline and mines were gone before 1900, but mining continued in Pennsylvania towns such as Vestaburg and elsewhere. The former Otis Steel company along the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland was purchased in 1942, and then in the mid-1960s a finishing plant was constructed in Hennepin, Illinois.

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