The Battle of Homestead, one of the most dramatic conflicts in American labor history, erupted on this site in 1892 after Carnegie Steel Company, managed by Henry Clay Frick, refused to recognize the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, locked workers out of the mills on June 28, and faced a strike called for July 1. On the morning of July 6, 300 Pinkerton agents hired to guard the mill tried to land barges at the pump house dock, where they were confronted by thousands of townspeople angered by the threat to their livelihood. In the daylong battle, seven workers and three Pinkertons were killed, countless others were wounded, and the surviving Pinkertons surrendered, then were beaten and jeered as they were forced to run a bloody gauntlet into town before being taken away by train. The Pennsylvania National Guard was then called in to govern the town and help the company regain control of the mill, ruling for 95 days. The strike failed, and the steel industry was not successfully re-unionized until the 1930s. The pump house, one of two built on this side of the Monongahela, was built in 1892, expanded in 1896, and pumped river water into the Homestead Works for nearly a century, supplying water needed to cool steel, clean scale from rolled steel, and cool equipment.
