KYW Flashback: Steel Industry Fades Fast In The Suburbs

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Furnaces were cooled and freight trains carrying tons of steel product stopped rolling. Nothing more clearly defined the changing nature of suburban Philadelphia.

For 30 years during the 1970's, 80's and 90's KYW traced the fading fortunes of the region's once dominant steel industry.

Conshohocken, Phoenixville and Fairless Hills were thriving steel towns dating beyond the civil war. The steel forged here was a bedrock of American industry.

Tens of thousands of good paying jobs supported middle class families. They lived in our suburban counties, long before the words, "suburban" and "commuter" were ever coined.

But by 1971, foreign competition, documented by KYW reporters, began to take large bites out of local steel production. The KYW Suburban Bureau opened in 1972 and immediately had the plight of steel workers on its plate.

By 1998, Allen Wood, Phoenix and U.S. Steel were gone. Once industrial towns now looked to consumer driven business. Phoenixville and Conshohocken are thriving. But the steelworkers have become pages in a book of memories.