Bethlehem Steel Plant and Casino, Pennsylvania

Bethlehem Steel’s hometown plant in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, is one of the great monuments to the industry. It is much more than just a shuttered and abandoned mill, though it is that too. The plant once occupied 20% of the land in Bethlehem and employed more than 30,000 people at its peak. The future of the site is in the hands of the Sands Corporation of Las Vegas, which bought most of it in 2004, promising to spend $600 million in improvements. The casino opened in a new building at the plant site in 2009, and has been tremendously successful financially. Some of the plant has been preserved, and some of it is in development as the National Museum of Industrial History.