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The West Virginia Encyclopedia
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The West Virginia Encyclopedia
Weirton, located in southern Hancock and northern Brooke counties, is an industrial city once dominated by Weirton Steel Company, once the largest private employer in West Virginia and the state’s first billion-dollar corporation.
Incorporated in 1947, Weirton included the former communities of Hollidays Cove, Marland Heights, Weirton Heights, and Weirton. The town was named for E. T. Weir, the founder of Weirton Steel. Weirton had grown up with the steel mill, but it had previously remained unincorporated. For many years before incorporation, municipal services were provided by the Weirton Improvement Company, a subsidiary of Weirton Steel. Some of these services continued until the 1950s.
Weirton was a one-company town, but never a company town in the way many mining towns were in southern West Virginia, where the coal companies owned the entire community. Weirton Steel did own some housing, but those were barrack-like structures for unmarried men in the earliest years of the mill, before World War I. Nonetheless, the connection of company and town was close. Weirton’s first mayor, Thomas Millsop, was president of Weirton Steel and later president of its successor, National Steel.
Weirton developed rapidly following the building of the steel mill in 1909. Where there had been fields of grain and orchards of fruit in 1909, Weirton became an industrial center of 8,000 people by 1920 and 18,000 by 1940. The steelworkers represented many nationalities from Europe, plus some from the Middle East, as well as a large number of African-Americans.
In its first decade after incorporation, the city built the Weirton Community Center, Weirton General Hospital, and the Mary H. Weir Library. Weirton’s population peaked in 1960 at 28,201. Into the mid-1970s, Weirton reaped the blessings of the 12,000 well-paid jobs at Weirton Steel. Its citizens enjoyed one of the state’s highest per capita income levels and highest percentage of home ownership.
The economic malaise of the 1970s affected Weirton, leading to a population drop to 24,736 by 1980. After National Steel sold the Weirton plant to its employees in 1984, employment at the mill and population of the city continued to drop. The plant is now owned by Cleveland-Cliffs, which produces tin plate finishing. In May 2023, the company announced it was laying off approximately 300 employees, about one-third of its workforce. In February 2024, the company announced that in April, it would close the Weirton plant entirely, laying off some 900 employees. The decision came a week after the International Trade Commission removed a year-old tariff on Canada, China, Germany, and South Korea for “dumping”—selling or trading at below-market prices—tin and chromium-coated sheet steel products in the United States. The commission determined that the underpriced products had little financial impact on those same items produced in the United States.
In December 2022, Form Energy announced it would partner with the state of West Virginia on a new 55-acre iron-air battery factory on a portion of the former Weirton Steel grounds. The $760 million project, which broke ground in May 2023, is projected to create 750 full-time jobs. In July 2024, Cleveland-Cliffs announced it would construct an electrical distribution transformer production plant at Weirton. The transformers are essential for maintaining and modernizing the nation’s electrical grid.
In 2020, Weirton’s population stood at 19,163, making it West Virginia’s sixth largest city, trailing Charleston, Huntington, Morgantown, Parkersburg, and Wheeling.
Written by David T. Javersak
Javersak, David T. History of Weirton.. Virginia Beach: Donning Co., 1999.
Layoffs Coming to Cleveland-Cliffs in Weirton. The Weirton Daily Times, May 13, 2023.