Some 144 years after Pueblo’s Colorado Fuel & Iron Co. forged its first steel rail for the Union Pacific Railroad, UP’s top executive was back in Pueblo last week to receive a second, ceremonial rail.

That transaction, which took place in a newly opened mill on CF & I’s historic site, cemented Colorado’s relationship with the nation’s largest railroad well into the future.

The first rail milled in 1882 had been 30 feet long, short enough to fit on a railroad flatcar. The new one delivered Wednesday measures 100 meters — 328 feet, milled by a state-of-the-art electric arc furnace that’s 95% solar powered.

In its heyday as the “Steel City of the West,” some 22,000 workers had been employed at the mill. The 3-mile-long site was joined by a spiderweb of rail links to ore mining sites across Southern Colorado.

Some 6,000 workers were still at the plant in 1982 when steel prices collapsed, at a moment when foreign producers were capturing larger shares of the market. CF & I went through a series of bankruptcies, and 8,000 steelworkers and support employees in Pueblo lost jobs. The town’s population fell from just over 100,000 to 98,600.

Steel City of the West

That had left a rusting eyesore of furnaces and scrapyards along the freeway south of town that became a hapless icon for the city, as travelers sped through.

Now, new rail technology and sustainability are bringing steelworkers back to Pueblo — nowhere near the numbers of its early days, but already more than 1,000 workers, higher paid and trained, with more to come.

“Union Pacific and Rocky Mountain Steel Mills have a proud history of supporting American manufacturing, jobs and communities,” UP CEO Jim Vena said in a statement released as he took delivery of the hundred-meter-long “stick.”

“This renewed partnership will help strengthen our country’s supply chain and demonstrate the importance of reliable rail transportation in keeping our economy moving,” Vena added.

That handover has left Pueblo civic and business leaders crowing about their successful campaign to lure Rocky Mountain Steel, CF & I’s latest successor, to build the $1.2 billion rail mill on the site.

“What we did is salvage 1,500 high-pay jobs,” Dennis Flores, interim president of the Pueblo Economic Development Corp., told The Denver Gazette following the ceremony.

“This plant has a lot of automation, so it takes higher-paid occupations to run it,” he added.

Flores gives credit to Pueblo’s business community for having spearheaded a fundraising campaign that used a combination of a voter-passed sales tax and tax-increment financing to spawn the transformation.

Key to that was incentivizing the mill’s interim owner, EVRAZ North America, to carry out a $15 million cleanup of the century-old site.

New technology

That cleared the way for a facility designed around new rail milling technology, enabling faster, quieter transportation with less risk of derailments. Only two other plants worldwide, Flores notes, have the technology to mill the longer, stronger rail.

But there was a final hiccup along the route.

CF & I’s immediate heir as owner of the mill was EVRAZ, a British-flagged company whose majority stockholder was a Russian oligarch. As Russian President Vladimir Putin steered the nation toward a disastrous war with Ukraine, the Russian connection seemed ill-starred.

A 7-year contract

In 2025, a Connecticut-based holding company bought out EVRAZ, creating new ownership for the 144-year-old mill. Last April, Union Pacific and Rocky Mountain Steel signed a seven-year rail production contract.

At last week’s ceremony, Orion Steel CEO Doug Matthews, a former U.S. Steel executive who directs the parent company, was on site at the mill for the handover.

Flores said that the culmination owes credit to an array of business and governmental partners, including Colorado’s Office of Economic Development, the Pueblo Urban Renewal Authority and other city agencies.

In order to bring the transition about, Flores noted, it was necessary for Pueblo to annex 50 acres of the mill site into the city — property that had always been outside the city line in Pueblo County.

Flores said that the turnaround represents a four-decade effort to keep the city in the game, following the industrywide collapse that was gutting famous steel towns across the Rust Belt.

“We were unique,” Flores said. “Gary, Indiana lost half its population. We didn’t grow like the Springs and Denver, but we kept our head above water. It’s been a salvation.”

Pueblo’s population today is 111,000.

Fewer welds

With an annual capacity of 1.1 million tons, the new EAF furnace creates some noteworthy efficiency gains, requiring 80% fewer welds than current rails require, while improving track safety and reliability.

Beyond rail production, the plant also produces wire rods and rebar for construction and pipes and connections for oil and geothermal energy production, according to a statement by Rocky Mountain Steel.

Meanwhile, 95% of the power for the new electric milling technology is delivered by a 1,800-acre solar farm, creating the world’s first solar-powered steel mill, the statement said. Metal for the EAF mill is entirely stocked by recycled steel, making it the largest recycling operation in the state.

Flores noted that Pueblo’s ongoing recovery has been assisted, as well, by its wind-turbine power plant, the world’s largest, also employing more than 1,000 workers. Vestas sold that plant to CS Wind in 2021.

Orion Steel’s Matthews noted that workers at the new plant are members of the United Steelworkers Union.

“Pueblo’s steelmaking heritage represents the resilience, innovation and workforce strength that define American manufacturing,” Matthews said in a statement along with the first rail shipment.

“Our partner0ship with Union Pacific demonstrates what is possible when American companies work together to strengthen domestic supply chains and invest in the future,” Matthews added.

PEDCO’s Flores said that the outcome avoided what might have been a catastrophe.

“We always had this fear that if they decided to go to Portland or Texas, they would just shut this mill down,” he said. “Now, it’s going to be a centerpiece. The whole rail industry will go to this 328-foot rail.