In 1775 Benedict Arnold sent his soldiers to dig iron for cannon in New York's Adirondack Mountains. There was iron there, but in the westward sweep of U.S. industry big steelmen passed the Adirondacks by. The country was too wild, its roads too few and its scant settlements too short of labor, they agreed, to make Adirondack mining pay.
One exception was Republic Steel Corp.'s Tom M. Girdler. In 1938, to find out whether Adirondack ore was rich enough to warrant its cost, he leased the Mineville and Port Henry properties from the Witherbee...
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