Cleveland-Cliffs
Cleveland-Cliffs is the oldest continuously-operating industrial company in Cleveland, and among the oldest in the United States. Founded in 1847 as the Cleveland Iron Mining Company to exploit newly-discovered iron ore deposits on the Marquette Range of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, it has continuously mined and shipped iron ore for the American steel industry for 179 years — through the Civil War, the Gilded Age, two World Wars, the Great Depression, the Rust Belt collapse, and the deindustrialization of the 1980s and '90s.
In 2020 Cleveland-Cliffs transformed itself from an ore-mining firm into a fully-integrated steel producer with the acquisition of AK Steel, and later that year acquired the US operations of ArcelorMittal. Those two acquisitions made Cleveland-Cliffs the largest flat-rolled steel producer in North America — a remarkable reinvention for a company that had, as recently as 2019, been primarily a mining concern.
The Marquette Range
Iron ore was discovered on the Marquette Range of Michigan's Upper Peninsula in 1844 by William Burt, a federal land surveyor. The Marquette deposits — massive, exposed, high-grade hematite — offered the potential of an American iron industry independent of imported Cornish or Welsh ores. Exploiting the deposits required assembling capital, technology, and Great Lakes shipping infrastructure.
A group of Cleveland capitalists led by Samuel Livingston Mather incorporated the Cleveland Iron Mining Company on November 9, 1847, with the specific purpose of mining Marquette ore and shipping it down the Great Lakes to the foundries of Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Youngstown. The first ore shipment arrived in Cleveland in 1855. By 1860 the company was shipping roughly 100,000 tons per year; by 1900, approximately 2 million tons per year.
A Century of Consolidation
In 1891 the Cleveland Iron Mining Company merged with the Iron Cliffs Company (another Marquette miner) to form the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company. Over the twentieth century the firm expanded to include ore holdings on all of the Lake Superior ranges (Marquette, Gogebic, Menominee, Mesabi), a Great Lakes ore fleet operating under the Cleveland-Cliffs Steamship Company name, and significant coal and limestone holdings supporting the integrated steel industry.
The firm survived the cyclical crises of the American steel industry — the long price decline of the 1880s, the Great Depression, the post-1980 collapse of integrated steelmaking — through a combination of conservative financial management, diversification of ore holdings, and a willingness to take equity positions in the steel mills that bought its ore. By the 1990s the company's principal business had become the operation of mine-mouth iron-ore pellet plants that sold directly to the surviving US integrated steelmakers.
The 2020 Reinvention
For most of its history, Cleveland-Cliffs was purely a mining-and-shipping company. It sold iron ore and pellets; it did not make steel. That changed dramatically in 2020 under CEO Lourenco Goncalves. In March 2020, the company completed its acquisition of AK Steel, the integrated steelmaker descended from Armco Steel. In December 2020, it acquired the US steelmaking operations of ArcelorMittal, including the massive Indiana Harbor and Cleveland Works integrated mills.
The combined effect was to transform Cleveland-Cliffs from a miner selling ore to steelmakers into a fully-integrated steelmaker itself — the largest flat-rolled steel producer in North America, with annual revenues around $22 billion. The acquisition strategy was widely seen as a bet on the continued viability of integrated (blast-furnace, oxygen-converter) steelmaking in an era when many competitors had transitioned to electric-arc mini-mills.
The company retains its Cleveland headquarters (on Lakeside Avenue near the Flats), and the Cleveland Works integrated steel mill — the successor of the original Jones and Laughlin Cleveland mill of 1914 — remains an active operation in the Flats today. In a city that has lost most of its founding corporations, Cleveland-Cliffs's 179-year continuity is an extreme outlier.
Life Timeline
- Marquette Ore Discovered1844
William Burt finds the deposits in Michigan's UP. - Company Founded1847
November 9. Cleveland Iron Mining Company incorporates. - First Ore Shipment1855
Arrives in Cleveland from Marquette. - Merger with Iron Cliffs1891
Becomes Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company. - Steamship W.G. Mather1925
Company launches its flagship lake carrier. - Renamed Cliffs Natural Resources1990
Then 2017 renamed back to Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. - Acquires AK Steel2020
March. Enters integrated steelmaking. - Acquires ArcelorMittal USA2020
December. Becomes largest flat-rolled steel producer in North America.