Mingo Junction, and the Steubenville Works, a mile north of it, were the largest of a few steel production sites that operated for years as Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel. Starting with a small iron plant here in 1872, Mingo Junction grew to produce more than 1.3 million tons of new steel a year. RG Steel acquired this facility in 2010. After RG Steel announced its bankruptcy, the Mingo Junction plant was sold at auction, in August 2012, for $20 million. Its new owners, the Frontier Industrial Corporation of Buffalo, New York, demolishes industrial sites and sells their scrap.