The Lordstown plant is in the Mahoning Valley, once the second-largest steel-producing area in the country. Since the nineteen-seventies, the valley, home to Youngstown (“Steeltown, U.S.A.”), has lost more than fifty thousand well-paying steelworker jobs. At its peak, the Lordstown plant employed more than fourteen thousand people; at the time of its closing, it was the last large blue-collar anchor left in the area.