Watertown weekly leader. [volume] (Watertown, Jefferson County, Wis.) 1906-1908, 1907-05-03
STATES PROMINENCE
IN MINERAL PRODUCTS
SUPPLY CANISTER WILL LAST
ONE HUNDRED YEARS.
Such is Findings as a Result of
Exhaustive Surveys in the Vi
Cinity of Ablemdn. Wis. Pitts
burg Capitalists to Erect Fire
Brick Plant.

Chicago April 29-Wisconsin' S
prominence as producer of minerals
is to be encnanced by the early devel-
opment of great beds of ganaster
recently made subject of extensive sur
veys by Pittsburg capitalists. This
fact came to light today, when il
became known that the HARRISON Wal
ker Refractorles company of Pittsburg
has completed arrangements to erect
$3.50, 900 fire brick plant at Indiana
Harhor. Ind, 10 miles from Chicago.
Great secrecy has been cast around
the operations of the company and
its plans for making Indiana Harbor
the site of the largest of It's half score
of plants.
1t is understood that the exhaustive
surveys of the ganaster regions of
Wisconsin have shown that in the
vicinity of Ableman, Wis.,, there is
supply of that mineral that will last,
even with the greatest possible develop
ment, for hundred years. This, COM
bined with the commercially strategic
location of Indiana Harbor, turned the
scale in favor of building the new plant
which will be nearer the base of gan.
aster supplies than any now existing.
What influence the opening of the
Indiana Harbor plant will have upon
commercial interests of the Sank
county ganaster district is not kown.
Members of the commission making
the survey, however, have said the
material is to be shipped to Indiana
Harbor by rrainloads. The plant will
employ $40 men to start with, begin
ming in September, and it is probable
that large number of extra working
crews will be employed in Sank county
to care for the business thus developed.
Tests lasting months were made OF
the Wisconsin ganaster before the
location of the plant at Indiana Harbor
was decided upon. Supplies were
taken from beds in various parts of
the district. All proved satisfactory,
very high average of refractory
quality being shown.
A. L. Soaring of PIttsburg,
widely travelled expert who is superln-
tending preliminary work on the con-
struction of the plant at Indiana Har-
Dor, said the CANISTER beds in the coal
districts of Pennsylvania are being
worked out and the Wisconsin source
of supply is the best now available in
the country, comparing favorable in
quality with the best produced in Eng
land and Scotland.
The main building at Indiana Har-
Dor will be 400 by 450 feet steel frame,
with brick veneer exterior. 1t will
be in the center of the company's
25-acre tract, and readily accessible
to lake and rail transportation. Every
southern and eastern road out of
Chicago passes within a mile Of the
plant.
1t is designed that the fire brick
turned out at Indiana Harbor is to be
used throughout the entire steel dis
trict now slowly centerlng in the
Calumet region. The product will be
used in the furnaces and retorts of
the steel trust works and those of the
independent steel and iron companies
at Indiana Habror and East Chicago.
The fire-brIck plant to use the Wiscon
sin CANISTER is to be, when completed,
the largest in point of production IN
the world.