Boom Town 1965

Through the green fields that surround the little town of Hennepin, Ill. (pop. 350), surveyors tramped last week under the searing Midwestern sun. Since its founding in 1831 in the great bend of the Illinois River 112 miles west of Chicago, Hennepin has been largely bypassed and ignored by the world beyond. Its main industry is duck hunting, its greatest claim to fame the burial site of the Potawatomi chief, Senachwine. Hennepin may soon long for the simple days. The surveyors are setting down the boundaries of a huge new $600 million steel mill that Pittsburgh's Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. will begin building next year on 6,000 acres of Hennepin land.

Flowing Westward. Not since U.S. Steel decided in 1905 to put a plant on the hunk of Lake Michigan sand that is now Gary, Ind., has a private project had such opportunity to change an entire area. The mill will start off employing 2,500 people in a plant for finishing rolled steel shipped from the East. Jones & Laughlin hopes that the plant will eventually be completely integrated from blast furnaces on up, expects it to generate satellite manufacturing industries to use its steel. Says Jones & Laughlin Chairman Charles M. Beeghly: "We are talking about the largest single development in the company's history."

Anxious to follow the westward flow of industry and begin tapping the booming Chicago market, Jones & Laughlin, the nation's sixth largest steel producer, started looking over possible Midwestern sites last summer. Its conditions: plentiful water, a youthful labor supply in the area, easy rail access and cheap land. With the aid of Fantus Co., the international plant-location experts, they considered half a dozen possible sites, finally settled on Hennepin as the one best meeting the requirements.

Day of the Locust. When Jones & Laughlin made its intentions public last April, a stampede of speculators began. Property values soared: the steel company had already doubled the going rate by paying $870 an acre for its site, and nearby Hennepin land soon started attracting bids of up to $5,000 an acre. A vacant lot 80 ft. by 150 ft. drew an offer of $10,000. Two speculators tried to buy up stock in Hennepin's sole bank, threatened to put up another one next door when their offer was refused. Half a dozen groups rushed in and offered to buy the Putnam County Record, the county's only newspaper.

Now that prosperity seems on the way to Hennepin, three different telephone companies have petitioned the Illinois Commerce Commission in an effort to take over from tiny Hennepin Mutual (216 telephones). Three power companies, which had never previously considered it worthwhile to provide the town with gas, are bidding spiritedly against one another for the right to do so now. And where Hennepin in the past has been served inadequately by three truck lines, 200 more have suddenly materialized to battle for routes.

The people of Hennepin are greeting the coming of Jones & Laughlin with native caution. Most of them are just sitting tight, holding on to their property. Says Ernest Bassi, a leading Hennepin businessman: "The people around here aren't damned fools. They aren't going to sell out their town or their neighbors." Any apprehension they feel about what a big steel mill may do to their countryside is more than offset by enthusiasm for what it can mean to a town whose population has been declining ever since the 1870s. "Our hope," says Attorney Walter Boyle, "is that the kids of the area will now have a reason to stay."

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