EAST BRADY — Those who plan to visit the 34th annual East Brady Riverfest next weekend should take a minute between their corn dogs and lemonade to picture the area as it once was: a major player in Pittsburgh’s emergence as America’s steel town.

Debbie McCanna, president and a charter member of the 39-year-old Bradys Bend Historical Society, explained that the first steel manufacturing plant in the New World opened in Bradys Bend Township in 1839.

The Great Western Iron Co. was so named because of East Brady’s extreme western location during America’s infancy. It later became the Bradys Bend Iron Co.

The mill used a cold-blast furnace to produce rails for the railroad industry, and saw its heyday in the 1850s. McCanna said Great Western sold 250 tons of rails per week at that time.

Aiding the mill were significant seams of coal on either side of the Allegheny River in the township and East Brady borough. The coal was used to melt raw iron ore also found in the area, McCanna said.

The limestone that continues to be mined in the East Brady area was sent to Pittsburgh by barge, along with coal and iron ore.

Hence, the East Brady area played a part in the buildup of steel mills in Pittsburgh.

In the rail-making process, limestone helped the soft bituminous coal mined in the area to burn hotter to more efficiently melt the iron ore.

“So you really need to find a place where all three were available, and that was right here,” she said.

McCanna has childhood memories from the 1950s of coal and iron ore barges floating down the river past East Brady, but she said the area’s deposits of iron ore and coal have been depleted by extensive strip mining in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Bradys Bend Iron Co. eventually faltered when steel companies from the United Kingdom grew frustrated at the company taking their customers, and began undercutting their prices.

“By 1872, it was an inflated market, and a panic set in,” McCanna said. “At the end of 1872 and beginning of 1873, the bottom fell out of the iron and steel industry. (Bradys Bend Iron Co.) was selling its product for pennies on the dollar.”

The plant closed in 1879, McCanna said, and the hulking machinery that supplied railroad builders all over the country was sold for $5,000 in scrap.

East Brady’s skilled miners and steelworkers packed up their families, who often lived in housing built by the steel mill, and moved to Pittsburgh, Ohio or the steelmaking centers in the south.

Today, McCanna said, the population of Bradys Bend Township is about 1,000. East Brady’s population stands at about 950.

“During the heyday, there were probably 3,000 to 4,000 people living in the area,” McCanna said.

Because of the nearly annual flooding of the Allegheny River before locks were installed in the 1930s, the only thing remaining of the steel mill today are the decaying exteriors of two blast furnaces near the baseball fields and tennis courts along Route 68 in Bradys Bend Township.

A nearby state historical marker and McCanna’s efforts ensure the mill will not be forgotten.