Acme Steel, Chicago Coke Plant
A few weeks ago when I first entered the coal bunker, amongst the load of paperwork I hauled away I found a videotape. Stupidly, I left it behind. When I got home, I realized I had a folder full of info pertaining to said videotape. You can read all of it over at the document […]
Digging through hundreds of pages of documentation I have pulled from the plant, I pretty quickly learned the names of some of the managers in the late 90s. One that came up again and again was Doug. After some sleuthing, I was able to contact him via email and ask him some of the nearly […]
The Friday night you see me not having a beer is rare, and it means I must have something very important to do Saturday morning. The week went by so slow waiting for my chance to go back and clean out as many documents as I could carry. I went to bed at 10pm just […]
I had another mission for this trip. I wanted to climb up and dislodge some coke from an oven, break it up and get it into a jar to display in my bedroom. This was a bit harder to accomplish than I figured but I got it done. More exciting than that was finally climbing […]
After spending almost three months in Georgia for work, I laid in bed many times and thought about the peace that awaited me back at Acme. Finally, I was home and had the time to head down. So much was revealed to me, as fall had stripped the foilage away from the property. New things […]
That video is taken at the end of ‘the snake’: the path that leads from the gate house west, leaving you at a dead end. I had been looking at the satellite view trying to construct a way to get to the coal bunker without fully doubling back to the gate house and this was […]
Just a week after the fourth of July extravaganza I could not resist heading right back down. The summer months are a great time to cycle Hegewisch and there is almost never a bad time to stop by Acme and reflect.
With my first visit under my belt, I was eager to go back and I had some missions in mind. I wanted to take a sign I had seen, nearly torn off from years of bare handed attempts. I packed some basic tools I hoped would help me. This is also the first time I […]
For my first trip, I had much too long (one week!) to obsess over what it would be like to roam around. I planned a route to visit and explore every building on the property. I identified 6 buildings and a route to access them all. I did not see the coal bunker or oven […]
I was visiting Hegewisch for a bike ride in June when I came down Torrence and saw something I had never noticed before. Dilapidated buildings – a lot of them. My heart quickened, I knew I had to get inside. Naïve as I am, I assumed I was finding something special. I would later learn […]