Butler County has a long tradition of building America.

American Bantam Car Company designed the Jeeps used in World War II. Armco Steel, now Cleveland-Cliffs, created the grain-oriented electrical steel critical to how electricity is delivered to homes across the nation. Wire rope, developed in Saxonburg, is essential for suspension bridges, including the Brooklyn Bridge.

But manufacturing is not just history in Butler County. It’s a legacy that manufacturers like Cleveland-Cliffs, Coherent and MSA Safety maintain in 2026.

The things made and the people raised in Butler County continue to play noteworthy roles in history. Whether it is artificial intelligence, space exploration or even innovations in firefighting equipment, Butler County has a hand in shaping the nation’s future.

For over a century, the steel industry has served as the backbone of Butler County, employing thousands of residents and making the steel that built America.

Steel’s story in Butler County began in the early 1900s, when the Forged Steel Wheel Company opened. It produced steel railroad wheels for Butler’s Standard Steel Car Company, which later became Pullman-Standard.

In the early 1920s, the Columbia Steel Company bought the Forged Steel Wheel Company plant, and before 1930, Armco had bought the Butler plant and its patents for $20 million — about $380 million in 2026 when adjusted for inflation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

After Armco took over, the plant’s range of products expanded. The Butler Works, as it came to be known, started producing specialty steel in 1930 when it produced its first stainless steel coils.

As the years went on, the steel at the Butler Works was used “in various parts of the automotive industry, in transformers and in structural barriers,” according to Butler County Historical Society executive director Mackenzie Herold.

The Butler Works also became a home for steel innovation In 1932 when the mill produced the first stainless steel sheets using the continuous cold reduction method, according to previous Eagle reporting.

In 1936, the mill launched the first continuous zinc coating line. In 1939, the mill became the first plant to coat steel with aluminum. At about the same time, the plant began to produce grain-oriented electrical steel, which it still produces.

The Butler Works continued to evolve over the years, adding new equipment and new steelmaking methods, such as the argon oxygen decarburization process, which the plant introduced in 1978.

The Butler Works changed hands in 1999 when Armco merged with AK Steel, and again in 2019 when Cleveland-Cliffs bought AK Steel.

Today, Butler Works is the only place in the United States where high-silicon grain-oriented electrical steel is made. This steel forms the core of transformers, which help electricity flow from the power plant to homes and businesses.

However, the future of steelmaking in Butler County came under threat in 2023, when the U.S. Department of Energy proposed a new rule that would have required transformers to be more energy efficient. That rule threatened the Butler Works because transformers with grain-oriented electrical steel cores would not meet the rule’s energy efficiency standards.

With one of Butler County’s biggest industries on the line, elected officials, union workers and Butler County residents fought back. Over 2,400 people signed a United Auto Workers petition against the rule. Hundreds of people packed town halls to protest it. Those efforts reached elected officials from both sides of the aisle, who wrote letters to the Department of Energy and proposed bills to ensure the plant survived.

Thanks to those efforts, in 2024, the Department of Energy rewrote its original rule to allow for 75% of the transformer market to continue using grain-oriented electrical steel, saving the Butler Works.

In 2024, the Department of Energy and Cleveland-Cliffs also announced a plan to further improve the Butler Works. Thanks to a $75 million DOE grant, Cleveland-Cliffs will install four induction reheat furnaces to reduce the plant’s carbon dioxide emissions and allow the Butler Works to keep producing steel for a long time.

Steel is not the only field in which Butler County has excelled. Products made in Butler County and by local companies — from the Bantam Jeep to firefighters’ gear made by MSA Safety — have protected those who serve our country and communities for decades.

Perhaps Butler County’s most famous contribution to those who serve is the iconic Bantam Jeep. The vehicle’s history is memorialized in the city with a statue, and an annual festival brings Jeepers galore to Butler County every June.

The vehicle was crucial to the American victory in World War II. It also served as the foundation for today’s light military vehicles. The Jeep’s story goes back to the summer of 1940, when the U.S. Army visited the Bantam plant in Butler to discuss the idea of a light military vehicle to become the workhorse of the army.

At the factory, members of the Quartermaster Corps and created a working plan, including the first sketch of a Jeeplike vehicle. The Army continued to work on the proposal throughout the summer. By July 2, the Army invited 135 manufacturers to bid on the contract to make the new vehicle.

The specifications the Army provided called for a “four-wheel drive, 40 horsepower, 1,300-pound reconnaissance car,” according to Herold. With a tight 49-day deadline, only two companies, Bantam and Willys-Overland, submitted bids.

With such a tight deadline, Bantam had no time to lose. Beginning Aug. 5, 1940, a team consisting of freelance auto designer Karl Probst, Bantam factory manager Frank Fenn, former General Motors executive Arthur Brandt and a crew of specialists “worked around the clock to design a working Bantam reconnaissance car in just seven weeks.”

Against all odds, the team completed their prototype Sept. 21. After a harrowing drive to Camp Holabird in Maryland, Bantam delivered their submission with just 30 minutes to spare.

At Camp Holabird, the vehicle, which eventually became known as the Jeep, passed every test the Army could put it through. It was approved to begin production in October 1940, according to a previous Eagle article.

Despite the Bantam Jeep’s strong performance in Army Testing, Bantam’s lack of production capacity led to Willys-Overland and later Ford mass producing Jeeps for the war effort.

However, Bantam’s ingenuity lived on in those later iterations, as, according to Herold, “the Bantam Jeep was the blueprint for every other Jeep produced during World War II.”

The Bantam Jeep marks a milestone in military history. It was not only the first iteration of an icon, but, according to Herold, it “was the blueprint for future lightweight personnel and supply vehicles.”

Today’s military vehicles still carry a piece of Butler County with them.

East Butler-based Standard Bent Glass manufactures windows and windshields for military and law enforcement vehicles, which range from Humvees and Joint Light Tactical Vehicles to armored police cars and SWAT-style vehicles.

These specialized windshields are bullet-resistant and protect occupants from projectiles and shrapnel. Sometimes, these panels of glass are the only barrier between life and death.

On one mission overseas, a U.S. Army Humvee with a Standard Bent Glass windshield was hit by enemy sniper fire. According to Gregory Conn, CEO and president of Standard Bent Glass, the glass “performed exactly as designed,” saving the occupants’ lives and allowing the mission to continue.

The U.S. Army later presented the windshield that saved those soldiers’ lives to Standard Bent Glass. Conn wrote the windshield “serves as a powerful example of how our products help safeguard American service members around the world.”

Also protecting lives is Cranberry Township-based MSA Safety, which manufactures several important pieces of firefighter equipment.

The gear MSA makes includes fire helmets and boots, protective clothing and breathing apparatuses, which allow firefighters to breathe fresh air inside a burning building.

As America moves toward 300 years of independence, the country will strive to make breakthroughs in the new frontiers of outer space and artificial intelligence. Just like in the past, Butler County companies will be on the front lines of innovation for these new frontiers.

Saxonburg-based Coherent’s products already made fast fiber optic internet connections possible. Today, Coherent’s focus is on creating the infrastructure for the future of artificial intelligence.

Although Coherent makes many products, including the lasers that power the iPhone’s Face ID system, optical transceivers have fueled the company’s recent growth.

Transceivers serve as the backbone of fiber optic internet, converting electrical signals into pulses of light, which are then sent down the fiber optic lines and converted back into electrical signals by another transceiver.

Transceivers also play an important role in AI data centers, which run and train AI models. Data centers must transmit massive amounts of data between servers, and transceivers allow it to be transmitted via fiber optic lines at the speed of light.

In fact, Coherent’s products, including transceivers, are so important to AI development that Nvidia, one of the biggest players in the AI field, invested $2 billion in Coherent to support research and development, future capacity and operations.

Meanwhile, for companies who want to explore outer space, Butler-based Belleville International’s parts ensure they can reach the final frontier. Belleville manufactures components for private space companies, including SpaceX and Blue Origin.

The company specifically makes actuators — used in SpaceX’s Starship reusable rocket system — to ensure fuel safely flows from the tanks to the engines.

Belleville International owner Ralph Hardt said manufacturing parts for use in space is “difficult, but rewarding.”

One of the most difficult parts of manufacturing for space is, in Hardt’s words, the fact that “failure is not an option.

“We have to ensure that every component is right,” Hardt said. “You cannot afford a failure.”

With SpaceX’s ambitions to use the Starship system to return humans to the moon and even start a settlement on Mars, Belleville’s actuators could play a role in helping America conquer the final frontier.