Just like that, Utah County's skyline was altered, the heart blown out of the steel mill that for the better part of six decades served as the area's economic backbone and provided a livelihood for thousands of families.

The financial decline of Geneva Steel was much slower and more painful. In 2002, after years of accumulating debt and spotty layoffs, Geneva filed for bankruptcy. By then Glade Brereton and the rest of the lunch-bucket crowd were gone, taking with them memories of a better time.

"Everyone took the hard work in stride, and it brought many of us closer," Brereton said. "When I retired in 1985 after 38 years on the job, there were seven others who retired with me. And we still get together every once in a while."

The federal government built Geneva Steel during World War II, far away from the West Coast and out of range of Japanese bombers.

Its blast furnaces produced hundreds of thousands of tons of metal a year, which was used to construct bridges and ships and girders for high-rise buildings. At its heyday, Geneva employed more than 5,000 workers.

The mill closed in 1987 but was bought by Joe Cannon and partner Robert Grow, who, try as they might, could not return it to its former glory.

For some, the happy memories of life at Geneva have been replaced by bitterness over the closure of the mill - a failure that many steelworkers continue to blame on management.

"They might as well get rid of those things [the blast furnaces]," said Horace Montoya, who worked for years as a "scrap burner" at the plant. "They got rid of us, didn't they?"

Geneva executives have offered a different view of the company's failure.

The mill's demise resulted from what longtime chairman Cannon described as the "worst steel crisis ever."

In the late 1990s, the domestic price for steel plunged precipitously while at the same time foreign producers flooded the market with low-cost product.

It was the worst of all possible situations for Geneva, which had spent hundreds of millions of dollars modernizing its plant on the eastern shore of Utah Lake. The company found itself squeezed between declining revenue and an overwhelming debt burden.

The company filed for Chapter 11 in hopes of reorganizing its debt, but it was unsuccessful. Geneva's remaining assets are now being liquidated for the benefit of its unsecured creditors.

Thursday's demolition is part of a plan to level the plant so the land beneath the once prosperous steel mill can be cleaned up, sold and developed. In all, three blast furnaces, nine stoves used to preheat air for the furnaces, and two smokestacks were blown up. Moments after the furnaces were brought down, Geneva trustee James Markus offered some good news for creditors.

A new company known as Utah Lake, which is affiliated with a Chicago-based real estate development company, has stepped forward and is offering to buy Geneva's remaining assets for $44.5 million, which is nearly $17 million more than the next highest bid received to date.

Markus indicated he intends to ask the U.S. Bankruptcy Court to approve a process that would bring bidding for Geneva's remaining assets to an end before Sept. 1. In the meantime, Utah Lake's offer will be the "stalking horse bid" or the one to beat by anyone interesting in acquiring Geneva's remaining assets.

And now, those assets include tons of scrap metal created when the furnaces fell. The demolition, however, didn't go as smoothly as expected.

As the smoke and dust raised by the falling debris ebbed, the outline of four of nine stoves slated for destruction slowly emerged from the manmade fog.

"All the charges went off but they didn't move enough of the foundation beneath the stoves to bring them down," Geneva Steel plant manager Mike Curtis said. "We're going back in, redrilling and we'll repack those holes with explosives."

The company hopes to have the remaining stoves down by this morning.

Regardless, the destruction of the blast furnaces represents a milestone for Geneva's unsecured creditors who still are owed approximately $75 million.

"It may be sad to see them go, but it is a sign that we're moving forward," said J. Thomas Beckett, who represents the committee of Geneva's unsecured creditors.

"It is an exciting day, but a sad one," added Brereton, who for 38 years labored as a carpenter in the shadow the furnaces. "It is hard to believe that this plant with all of its buildings soon will be gone."

steve@sltrib.com