New Iron Works Exhibit Opens At Isle A La Cache In Romeoville

ROMEOVILLE, IL — A new Joliet Iron Works artifact exhibit, "Stories from Steel," will open Nov. 1 at Isle a la Cache Museum in Romeoville, according to a release from the preserve.

The free, family-friendly exhibit will be on display through Jan. 31.

The exhibit can be viewed without registration during museum hours: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays to Saturdays and noon to 4 p.m. Sundays, the preserve said.

Visitors will learn how iron and steel were produced at the once-thriving plant and how the industry put Joliet on the map.

The exhibit was created so people can view artifacts from that era, which are normally in storage, said Amy Haller, a Forest Preserve program manager.

“We have a lot of artifacts,” she said in a release. “And we want to share these special stories that they have.”

Artifacts include a steel rail that was used in the Pike's Peak cog railway in Colorado. Years ago, during railway renovations, a lineman who was working in the area noticed a discarded rail with the imprint, “Illinois Steel Co. Joliet Works 1890.”

“He is a Joliet native, and he thought that was really neat,” Haller said of the lineman. “The salvaged rail sat around his house for quite some time until he eventually found us and donated it.”

Some artifacts were also collected from the Forest Preserve’s 52-acre Joliet Iron Works Historic Site, which protects the industrial ruins of the former Joliet Iron Works plant in downtown Joliet, the preserve said.

Each item will educate viewers on its role in the plant's history. For instance, a brick in the exhibit might not seem like anything special at first glance, Haller said, but the brick is from a blast furnace at the plant. Bricks were used to line the furnaces to absorb the heat and protect the furnace itself from the molten iron, she said in a release.

“Without the bricks, temperatures would get so hot they would have melted the blast furnace,” she said. “You have to have that barrier to protect the furnace. They’re fire bricks made from a special ganister rock that could take on that heat.”

Materials used in iron productions will also be on display, including a chunk of limestone and a piece of iron ore.

Also on display will be the plant’s magazine, “The Ledger,” which was produced from 1887 through 1891 and a company-wide newsletter called WireCo Life from 1950.

Haller said in a release that it’s important to show artifacts from a range of time periods because while steel stopped being produced at the main site in the 1930s, the finishing mill stayed open into the 1980s.

"Stories from Steel" was developed by museum staff, with the support of The Nature Foundation of Will County.