Rust world: postindustrial tourism and the theming of American industry

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Content RUST WORLD:
POSTINDUSTRIAL TOURISM AND THE THEMING OF AMERICAN INDUSTRY
by
Joshua W. Poorman
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(HISTORY)
August 2024
Copyright 2024 Joshua W. Poorman

ii
For my mom
and all the teachers in my life who have made me a lifelong learner

iii
Acknowledgments
This dissertation would not have been possible without the tireless support of my advisor Steve
Ross, who encouraged me to tell the story I wanted to share while never forgetting to ask the simple, yet
often thorny question, “So what?” Steve is the kind of scholar you want in your corner, and I am grateful
that he supported me as a historian, but more importantly, as a dad and husband. Life does not stop
when writing a dissertation, and I am thankful to have had an advisor who never overlooked that fact.
Steve offered innumerable insights on the researching, writing, and teaching of history, but the
memories I hold most dear are the ones in which he offered support on how to do those things while
also living my life.
Other faculty members in the department to which I owe great thanks are my dissertation
committee members, Vanessa Schwartz and Bill Deverell, as well as Aro Velmet, Alice Echols, Alaina
Morgan, Paul Lerner, George Sanchez, Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, Peter Mancall, and Lindsay O’Neill. I am
particularly thankful to Jennifer Hernandez, whom I’ve probably emailed more than anyone at USC, for
her constant support answering any and every question about the graduate school and dissertation
processes. Thanks also go to Lori Ann Rogers, Simone Bessant, and everyone else who keeps the Van
Hunnick History Department running smoothly. The Department is full of brilliant scholars, and I am
honored to have studied under their tutelage.
This dissertation brought me to seven states throughout the United States—it was an immense
privilege to conduct this research over a seven-month period. The travel required for this research would
not have been possible without support from the USC Graduate School, the Goldhagen Fund, and the
Kelteborn Endowment. I am also immensely grateful to the Graduate Student Government for semester
after semester of childcare grants. And to the owner of that Airbnb in Bisbee, thank you for that glorious
outdoor shower.

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Countless archivists, librarians, curators, and executive directors assisted me gathering the
materials necessary to tell this story. David Reed of the Reno County Museum in Hutchinson, Kansas is
owed an immense amount of gratitude for his support and interest in this project. David provided
numerous resources from the Reno County Museum archives and connected me with the key figures in
the history of Strataca, whose interviews form the bedrock of that story. I am grateful to Jay Smith, Lee
Spence, Myron Marcotte, Michael Ables, and Linda Schmitt for taking the time to share their experiences
on the remarkable history lying beneath Kansas.
In Hershey, Don Papson, Tesa Burns, and Jennifer Henderson helped shepherd my research
inquiries over the course of multiple years. Doug Graeme with the Queen Mine Tour in Bisbee, Leslie
Baker with the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine, and Ty Malugani with Sloss Furnaces National Historic
Landmark all went above and beyond in offering their time and insights into the respective institutions
for which they worked. I am grateful too to Jim Baggett with the Birmingham Public Library. Many thanks
go to the numerous archivists and librarians in Minneapolis and St. Paul who worked with me during a
pandemic to get the necessary materials. In Texas, I am particularly grateful to Ryan Smith, then
Executive Director of the Texas Energy Museum, for his wisdom, time, and genuine curiosity in my work.
I doubt I would have embarked on the journey of graduate school had my two close friends, Alex
Skufca and Johnny Nelson, not pursued their own postgraduate careers first. Logic dictates that if a trio
of obnoxious undergrads describes themselves as a triumvirate, the third must follow suit in pursuing a
doctorate. My professors at Gettysburg College, including Michael Birkner, Felicia Else, Magdalena
Sanchez, Karen Pinto, Buz Myers, and Michael Weber all inspired in me a lifelong passion for the
Humanities. I also owe a great deal of thanks to Kristi Lengyel and Ben Caswell, both of whom have
always been more cognizant of my mental health than I could ever be—and serve the best haluski in Los
Angeles. I am indebted to Carl Reddel, who brought me along for the journey of the National Eisenhower
Memorial’s construction in Washington, DC and reawakened my love of American history and the built

v
environment. Lastly, to my colleagues at Sapphos Environmental, Inc., Graham Larkin, Barbara
Lamprecht, and Morgan Thomas, thank you for your continued support and encouragement as I finished
this process.
I am forever grateful for the support of my family. To my mom, you showed me from an early age
how to be kind. This kindness, paired with your cultivation in me of a lifelong passion for learning, has
formed the bedrock of my outlook as an historian. To my dad, you supported me in every way you could
through my undergraduate education and have never wavered in reminding me how proud you are of
me. I may have rolled my eyes or made a joke of it (and probably still will) but I always hear you. To
fellow Pirate Legend, Timmy Poorman, I am grateful for the much-needed nights of respite on the high
seas. I am thankful too to Tim Elliott, who shares with me a love for the odd and unusual places in the
world. I only regret that I could not locate the requisite kettle bottom in the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine
gift shop as a token of my gratitude. And to Buffy Elliott, I understand what it took to see us whisk away
to California and I am grateful for the love and compassion you showed me in understanding this
decision. We may be far away geographically, but you’re as close as can be in my heart.
Finally, I owe the greatest thanks to Elizabeth Poorman. In 2018, about two weeks before our
wedding, we flipped a coin to decide whether to stay on the east coast or move to California. We had
already spent months vacillating on the decision—one option keeping us close to family, the other full of
risk and uncertainty. The coin landed in favor of staying local. After staring at it in silence for what
seemed like an eternity, we both had our answer. The move across country was not the easy option, but
it was the right one. I am grateful, beyond all measure, to have a partner in crime crazy enough to take
that leap of faith with me. We would not be the people we are today had we stayed in our comfort zone.
Life with you has been the most romantic of adventures every step of the way.

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This dissertation is the culmination of my graduate experience that propelled us to California six
years ago. In that time, we have had two beautiful daughters, Jayne Runa and Mallory Rose, and shared
in the dizzying challenges of raising them while both working full-time. The joy they bring is
indescribable. In her spare time, Elizabeth has read every draft of this dissertation, many chapters more
than once. She is a better writer than me, and I am glad to have had her constant, intelligent, and
graceful comments on repeated occasion. More importantly, she has been my crutch throughout the
process, offering emotional support and shouldering the burden of two kids while I wrote late into the
evenings. One day, when I discuss my time at USC with them, they will know it could not have been
accomplished without their mom.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication.................................................................................................................................................. ii
Acknowledgements................................................................................................................................... iii
List of Figures.......................................................................................................................................... viii
Abbreviations........................................................................................................................................... xii
Abstract................................................................................................................................................... xiii
Introduction ...............................................................................................................................................1
PART 1: Foundations: Industrial Tourism, Heritage, Ruins
Chapter 1: Hershey’s Factory Tour and the Legacy of Industrial Tourism........................................25
Chapter 2: The Sentinels of Spindletop:
Heritage and the Historicization of the Oil Industry ......................................................65
Chapter 3: Ruined Renaissance:
Adventure and Adaptive Reuse in the Minneapolis Mill District.................................102
PART 2: Into the Mines: Physical and Cultural Transformations
Chapter 4: From a “Groundhog Hole”:
Access and Transformation in the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine ................................143
Chapter 5: The Separation of Production in Kansas’s Underground City.......................................173
Chapter 6: Quicksilver No More:
Mine Tourism’s Role in “Postindustrial” Bisbee ...........................................................206
PART 3: Towards an Industrial Theme Park
Chapter 7: The Colossi of Birmingham:
Vulcan, Sloss Furnaces, and World’s Fair Boosterism..................................................245
Chapter 8: Sublime Proximity:
Sloss Furnaces and the Evolution of Industry’s Image.................................................276
Chapter 9: Chocolate World and the Global Diffusion of Hershey’s Community ..........................306
Conclusion: The Limits of Themed Industry:
Six Flags AutoWorld and the Power Plant....................................................................351
Bibliography ...........................................................................................................................................377

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List of Figures
Figure 1: Bar card – Sanitary Milking Machine ........................................................................................27
Figure 2: Bar card – Scene in Hershey Park..............................................................................................29
Figure 3: Bar card – Section of One of the Finishing Rooms....................................................................32
Figure 4: Bar card – Hershey’s Public Swimming Pool .............................................................................33
Figure 5: Visitors Passing through the Kiss Moulding Department..........................................................35
Figure 6: Tourists Passing through the Kiss Wrapping Department.........................................................35
Figure 7: Visitors Receiving Free Samples of Cocoa.................................................................................36
Figure 8: Updated Visitors’ Reception Center in Hershey Factory...........................................................36
Figure 9: Bar card – Rural Scene in Hershey’s Countryside......................................................................46
Figure 10: Bar card – Children’s Playground in Hershey ..........................................................................48
Figure 11: Guests in Line for Factory Tour................................................................................................56
Figure 12: Guests in Line with View of Kiss streetlights...........................................................................56
Figure 13: Frank Trost Photograph of Lucas Gusher ................................................................................65
Figure 14: Boiler Avenue, Spindletop, c. 1903 .........................................................................................65
Figure 15: Dedication of the Lucas Gusher Monument on October 9, 1941 ...........................................69
Figure 16: Derricks at Spindletop’s Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration.......................................................69
Figure 17: Spindletop/Gladys City Boomtown Museum..........................................................................79
Figure 18: Thomas’s Drug Store Soda Fountain .......................................................................................81
Figure 19: Thomas’s Drug Store Doctor’s Office ......................................................................................81
Figure 20: General Store ..........................................................................................................................82
Figure 21: Dry Goods Store ......................................................................................................................82
Figure 22: Assortment of Houston Oilers Trading Cards and Sticker .......................................................91
Figure 23: Parkdale Mall Food Court with Industrial Displays .................................................................92
Figure 24: 2001 Replica Derrick and 1941 Las Gusher Monument..........................................................96
Figure 25: Centennial Celebration’s Debut “Blowing In” of Simulation...................................................96
Figure 26: Island White, THUMS Islands, Long Beach............................................................................101
Figure 27: Crown Roller Mill’s West Elevation .......................................................................................103
Figure 28: Crown Roller Mill Interior......................................................................................................103

ix
Figure 29: Washburn “A” Mill.................................................................................................................105
Figure 30: Crown Roller Mill Restoration in Process..............................................................................122
Figure 31: Crown Roller Mill Restored ...................................................................................................122
Figure 32: Washburn “A” Mill’s North Elevation ....................................................................................125
Figure 33: Washburn “A” Mill Interior....................................................................................................125
Figure 34: Ruin Courtyard, View North..................................................................................................129
Figure 35: Ruin Courtyard, View South..................................................................................................129
Figure 36: Mill City Museum..................................................................................................................130
Figure 37: Wheat House.........................................................................................................................134
Figure 38: Modern Bracing Affixing “A” Mill to Grain Elevators.............................................................134
Figure 39: Mississippi River and St. Anthony Falls.................................................................................135
Figure 40: Mill Ruins Park, Daytime .......................................................................................................138
Figure 41: Mill Ruins Park, Nighttime.....................................................................................................138
Figure 42: Pocahontas Exhibition Coal Mine Entrance ..........................................................................146
Figure 43: Pocahontas Exhibition Coal Mine Exit...................................................................................146
Figure 44: Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine Entrance.................................................................................149
Figure 45: One-ton Mine Cart................................................................................................................151
Figure 46: Jeffrey Loading Machine and Coal Scoop..............................................................................152
Figure 47: Low Coal Mining, Lindy Coontz.............................................................................................161
Figure 48: Low Coal Mining, Giffer J. Webb, Jr.......................................................................................161
Figure 49: Interior View of Undeveloped Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine ...............................................163
Figure 50: Coal Camp Company Store Visitor’s Center..........................................................................165
Figure 51: Nuttallburg Tipple .................................................................................................................170
Figure 52: Nuttallburg Button-and-Rope Conveyor ...............................................................................170
Figure 53: Cryderman Clam during Groundbreaking Ceremony............................................................188
Figure 54: Apparatus for Freezing Aquifer.............................................................................................188
Figure 55: New Mine Shaft in Early Stages of Excavation ......................................................................190
Figure 56: Portable Thyssen Headframe ................................................................................................190
Figure 57: Strataca / Kansas Underground Salt Museum ......................................................................194

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Figure 58: The Narrows..........................................................................................................................195
Figure 59: Undercutter in the Mining Gallery ........................................................................................197
Figure 60: Carey Salt Company Tourist “Man-Car” ................................................................................197
Figure 61: Dark Ride, Salt Rock Pile........................................................................................................199
Figure 62: Salt Mine Express..................................................................................................................199
Figure 63: Underground Vaults & Storage Exhibit .................................................................................201
Figure 64: Downtown Bisbee from Highway 80.....................................................................................207
Figure 65: Sacramento Pit, Postcard ......................................................................................................211
Figure 66: Lavender Pit, Postcard...........................................................................................................211
Figure 67: Volunteer Worker Sifting through Cave-in............................................................................219
Figure 68: Volunteer Worker Managing Collapsed Timbers..................................................................219
Figure 69: Queen Mine Tour Building ....................................................................................................221
Figure 70: Narrow Gauge “Man Car” with Mayor Chuck Eads ..............................................................221
Figure 71: Queen Mine Tour Route........................................................................................................223
Figure 72: Dynamite Demonstration......................................................................................................223
Figure 73: Warning Sign at Abandoned Mine Entrance.........................................................................233
Figure 74: Mine Dump Number 7 ..........................................................................................................233
Figure 75: Vulcan at the 1904 World’s Fair ............................................................................................248
Figure 76: Vulcan at the Alabama State Fairgrounds.............................................................................253
Figure 77: Vulcan atop Red Mountain....................................................................................................253
Figure 78: Aerial View of Sloss Furnaces................................................................................................257
Figure 79: One of Sloss’s Cast Sheds with “Pig” Molds..........................................................................257
Figure 80: Schematic of Sloss Furnace Ride...........................................................................................266
Figure 81: View of Abandoned Sloss Furnaces......................................................................................269
Figure 82: Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark ..........................................................................273
Figure 83: Ladle Car Right-of-Way..........................................................................................................280
Figure 84: Slag Pits and Water Tower.....................................................................................................282
Figure 85: Blowing Engine Room and Power House ..............................................................................282
Figure 86: Hot Blast Stoves ....................................................................................................................284

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Figure 87: Labyrinth of Pipes, Yellow-Painted Handrails........................................................................284
Figure 88: 1902 Allis-Chalmers Blowing Engine.....................................................................................284
Figure 89: Blowing Engine Room Interior ..............................................................................................284
Figure 90: Pipework and Shadows.........................................................................................................286
Figure 91: Pathways throughout the Complex.......................................................................................286
Figure 92: Underground Stock Tunnel ...................................................................................................290
Figure 93: Inclined Skip Hoist of Furnace No. 2 .....................................................................................290
Figure 94: Base of Furnace No. 2 ...........................................................................................................294
Figure 95: Ensley Steel Works, 1930s.....................................................................................................301
Figure 96: Ensley Steel Works Ruins ......................................................................................................301
Figure 97: R. Duell and Associates Sketch of Pipework and Roasting Oven...........................................316
Figure 98: R. Duell and Associates Sketch of Roasting Oven..................................................................316
Figure 99: Chocolate World Depiction of Cocoa Bean Harvest..............................................................323
Figure 100: Chocolate World Roasting Oven and Milling Machines......................................................323
Figure 101: Chocolate World Refining Rolls and Conching Vats ............................................................325
Figure 102: Chocolate World Bar Moulding...........................................................................................325
Figure 103: Tropical Retail Arboretum ...................................................................................................330
Figure 104: Glass-Encased Sales Counter...............................................................................................332
Figure 105: Digital Animation of Hershey Bar Product Character..........................................................338
Figure 106: Animatronic of Hershey Kiss Product Character.................................................................338
Figure 107: Tour Guide Reunion with Hershey Kiss ...............................................................................339
Figure 108: Chocolate World’s Factory-Themed Exterior ......................................................................340
Figure 109: Updated Chocolate World Barn Intro .................................................................................341
Figure 110: Updated Chocolate World Brand Outro..............................................................................341
Figure 111: Hershey’s Times Square Spectacular Sign...........................................................................347
Figure 112: AutoWorld and Downtown Flint.........................................................................................353
Figure 113: AutoWorld’s Saginaw Street................................................................................................355
Figure 114: Herb Ryman Sketch of the Power Plant ..............................................................................358
Figure 115: Magic Lantern Theatre’s Stage............................................................................................360

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Abbreviations
AZSA Polly Rosenbaum State Archives & History Building, Phoenix, Arizona
BMHM Shattuck Memorial Research Library, Bisbee Mining and Historical
Museum, Bisbee, Arizona
BPLA Birmingham Public Library Archives, Birmingham, Alabama
CQMA Copper Queen Mine Archive, Bisbee, Arizona
GFL Gale Family Library, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, Minnesota
HCA Hershey Community Archives, Hershey, Pennsylvania
HSC Hoole Special Collections, Amelia Gayle Gorgas Library, University of
Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama
JHSC James K. Hosmer Special Collections, Minneapolis Central Library,
Minneapolis, Minnesota
LUASC Lamar University Archives and Special Collections, Beaumont, Texas
RCPL Raleigh County Public Library, Beckley, West Virginia
RCHS Reno County Historical Society, Hutchinson, Kansas
SRL Sloss Research Library, Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark,
Birmingham, Alabama
TEM Texas Energy Museum, Beaumont, Texas
THL Tyrrell Historical Library, Beaumont, Texas
WVRHC West Virginia & Regional History Center, Morgantown, West Virginia
WVSA West Virginia State Archives, Charleston, West Virginia

xiii
Abstract
The confluence of an abandoned wasteland wrought by deindustrialization and the rise of the theme
park industry forged the genre of postindustrial tourism in the late twentieth century. Local
communities, left behind in the wake of corporate disinvestment and global capital mobility, teamed
with preservationists and those who worked on theme parks, casino resorts, and Hollywood film sets to
create new tourist experiences across the country. Collectively defined as Rust World, this landscape of
attractions tapped into visitor demand for education, nostalgia, and above all else, adventure, while
exhibiting a consistent, turn-of-the-century theme to which visitors could escape. The enduring appeal of
the case studies presented in this story reveal that many industrial communities successfully navigated
their way into a service economy that otherwise could have passed them by. Postindustrial tourism’s
normalization of this historicized and thematic image of industry has conversely hindered understanding
of what industry looks like today, and where it occurs—usually (deliberately) out of sight from the
average consumer. In the process, the factory regains its allure, but no longer as a symbol of industrial
might. Silenced and shorn of its polluting and exploitative potential, the factory now represents an exotic
place of mystery, waiting to be discovered by those curious enough to venture inside. This dissertation
demonstrates how our image of industry has moved firmly into the realm of entertainment, a theme to
be consumed alongside other distant and reductive aesthetics in a world of commercial theming.

1
Introduction
Your journey begins underground. Strap into an ore cart within the bowels of a historic,
nineteenth-century blast furnace complex and follow in the footsteps of iron ore’s transformation into pig
iron. Listen for the voice of Vulcan, the Iron Man of Birmingham, as you traverse the dark tunnels of a
coal mine. Soon you arrive at the subterranean base of the skip hoist. Do not let the dizzying height of the
furnace frighten you! The skip hoist transports you with ease from the stock tunnel to the top of Furnace
No. 1. Once there, take in spectacular views of the Jones Valley from the observation deck before
boarding an elevator prepped for descent through the blast furnace itself. As you slowly descend past
shifting layers of coke and ore, be sure to plug your ears as the noise of hot air blasting into the furnace
below grows to a roar. After you exit this fiery scene, hop aboard a ladle car for a scenic tour through the
rest of the plant. Keep your eyes and ears open to experience the wondrous workings of the furnace
complex, including moving twenty-foot flywheels and pounding pistons that power the site from its
blowing engine room.1
This scene offers a glimpse into the Alabama State Fair Authority’s madcap 1974 plan to
redevelop Birmingham’s Sloss Furnaces, where production had ended four years earlier. Regional
boosters promoted a hypothetical Sloss Furnace Ride as the centerpiece for a permanent World’s Fair in
the American Southeast. It would not come to pass, but another attraction would fill its place.
Throughout the late twentieth century, a host of similar sites emerged from deindustrialized ruins or
materialized in the liminal space between changing economies across the United States. Many of these
sites drew on professionals from the emergent theme park and entertainment industries for insight and
inspiration. In Beaumont, Texas, a recreated boomtown simulated daily life for roughnecks and oilmen
roughly a mile from where the Lucas Gusher famously sprayed oil into the air uncontrolled for nine days
1 Alabama State Fair Authority and Birmingham Planning and Zoning Commission, “Sloss Furnace Tract—A
preliminary study of site development,” 1974, Sloss Research Library, Birmingham, Alabama, 11-13.

2
in 1901. Communities across the country reopened defunct mines, retimbering and solidifying old
tunnels for conversion to tour routes. Visitors traveled to the once-booming cities of Beckley, West
Virginia, Bisbee, Arizona, and Hutchinson, Kansas to journey underground into old coal, copper, and salt
mines. Along the banks of the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis, a coalition of public officials
and private developers created the “Mill District” from dozens of extant buildings and structures related
to the city’s flour milling past. The Hershey Company in 1973 built Chocolate World, a dark ride that
whisked visitors through a simulation of the production process for creating chocolate bars.
The Sloss Furnace Ride and these various attractions represent a small part of the landscape of
Rust World, a collection of themed, postindustrial tourist attractions that emerged in the late twentieth
century. This dissertation seeks to understand how these sites emerged, why they emerged when they
did, and why they became so popular among American tourists. When sociologist Daniel Bell described
the “coming of postindustrial society” in 1973, he was referring to the structural reorganization of the
American economy from an industrial base to one of services—retail, finance, healthcare, education,
information technology, and of particular importance to this discussion, hospitality and tourism.2
Together these service sectors comprised a new economy that suggested that the nation had moved
beyond its industrial foundations. The idea that the United States had become postindustrial—that
American industry stood on the verge of extinction—influenced how Americans perceived the image of
industry in their lives and in media representations. Although my definition of “postindustrial” does not
2 Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (New York: Basic Books, 1973).
Dean MacCannell, on the other hand, suggests postindustrial society may have arrived much earlier. MacCannell
argues that the existence of industrial tourism at the turn of the century signaled the death of the industrial era
and the onset of the modern world. The mere existence of an image of industry in tourist settings, he contends,
signaled the arrival of a postindustrial modernity in which work was no longer the “exclusive anchor point
connecting the individual to society,” but rather just “one stop among many in tourists’ itineraries.” See
MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (1976; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013),
57.

3
contradict the broad economic changes that led Daniel Bell to coin the term in 1973, I define it strictly
through a touristic lens, as it relates to what I call the emergent category of postindustrial tourism.
For a tourist site to be deemed postindustrial, the tourist experience must have been severed
from the active site of production. This runs counter to the nation’s long history of industrial tourism, in
which corporations presented tourists with a firsthand, albeit manicured, view of production. This act of
separation forms the glue that holds together the diverse case studies that comprise this dissertation,
forming a typology that distinguishes this genre of tourism from other leisure activities. The case studies
in question further represent a variety of sites—some are outdoor museums with self-guided tours,
others are recreated heritage sites, and still others are theme park rides. I define them all loosely as
tourist sites, however, because all (but the most successful one) charge admission and rely on visitor
revenue to keep their doors open. Commercial transactions, out-of-town visitation, and the financial
success of each, bind them as viable tourist attractions. As we will see, the processes of, and reasons for,
separating the tourist experience from production site vary greatly. The separation might have been
deliberate by planners or might have developed organically from a plant closure. As a result, each tourist
attraction in question rests firmly in the late twentieth century’s burgeoning service economy, but their
industrial footprints (and the consequent dangers) often linger in unexpected ways.
Deindustrialization and Disneyland
I argue that the confluence of an abandoned wasteland wrought by deindustrialization and the
rise of theme park and entertainment industries during the mid-to-late twentieth century forged a new
genre of tourism in the 1970s and beyond. These economic and cultural changes laid the foundation for
a postindustrial moment of roughly 40 to 50 years. During this time, the layered and multiregional
processes of deindustrialization left behind a landscape of abandoned ruins, many of which were
embraced and transformed by communities left behind in the wake of global capital mobility and

4
corporate disinvestment. Relying on theme park and entertainment industry professionals to help
transform these sites, these communities converted abandoned sites into tourist attractions. Numerous
examples sprang up across the country, codifying a “fun” image of industry that has informed our
understandings ever since. The tourist industry’s meteoric rise in global prominence fully took hold in
the late twentieth century, but its roots went back much further. The railroad in the mid-to-late
nineteenth century, the automobile and its subsequent mid-century Interstate Highway System, and
eventually jet travel all enabled Americans to travel greater distances with greater ease. By the end of
the twentieth century, with an estimated economic footprint of 3.6 trillion dollars, the global tourist
industry had become the largest in the world.3 Tourism’s rise often dovetailed with, and contributed to, a
decline of industrial production. As industries folded, tourism took off. The ski resort typifies this
transition. Mountains once mined for ore are now covered with blankets of snow for recreation.
Postindustrial tourism, while a lesser-known genre of tourism than the ski resort and other leisure
sports, sits at the confluence of these two worlds—the crossroads of a declining productive economy
and the fullest realization of postwar consumer culture.
The process of deindustrialization left behind a burgeoning landscape of previously inaccessible
sites and structures, abandoned yet available for transformation into new tourist attractions. Many of
these sites oddly benefitted from the fact that it would have been prohibitively expensive to tear them
down in an environmentally responsible way. The cultural landscape of theme park and entertainment
offerings also played a vital role. With the opening of Disneyland in Anaheim, California in 1955, theming
in America soared to new heights. Those planning, redeveloping, and designing postindustrial tourist
attractions often took their cues from the leaders of the theme park and entertainment industries. This
dissertation focuses on coal mines, blast furnaces, and flour mills, but the historical drivers of change
3
Shelley Baranowski and Ellen Furlough, Being Elsewhere: Tourism, Consumer Culture, and Identity in Modern
Europe and North America, eds. Baranowski and Furlough (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 1.

5
include people who worked on theme parks, casino resorts, and Hollywood film sets. Disneyland, Six
Flags, and the themed resorts dotting the Las Vegas Strip all loom large. This story is as much about
these sites’ considerable cultural influence as it is about the working-class communities who successfully
navigated their way into a service economy that otherwise could have passed them by. If those
redeveloping these postindustrial sites were not attempting to recreate another Disneyland—which
some were—they were at least seeking to ride the crest of Disneyland’s wave of popularity in the 1960s,
70s, and 80s.
The emergence of both a deindustrialized landscape and a commercial theme park industry
unfolded alongside a crucial third metric: the rise of the modern historic preservation movement.
Following World War II, America embraced the wrecking ball. Development of the Interstate Highway
System and urban renewal programs throughout the nation wreaked havoc on historic neighborhoods,
while the loss of landmarks such as New York City’s Penn Station galvanized activists. Passage of the
National Historic Preservation Act in 1966 reaffirmed the federal government’s role in preserving its built
environment, but also facilitated the rise of heritage tourism.4 We must thus ask what role the modern
preservation movement played for postindustrial tourist sites, whose active operation once signaled a
clarion call to save previous eras from the onslaught of turn-of-the-century industrialization.5
Some of
the nation’s earliest preservationists were industrial magnates such as John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who
bankrolled the creation of Colonial Williamsburg, or Henry Ford, whose Greenfield Village became the
4
For more on the rise of the modern historic preservation movement, see William J. Murtaugh. Keeping Time: The
History and Theory of Preservation in America (Hoboken: Wiley, 2005); Norman Tyler, Historic Preservation: An
Introduction to Its History, Principles, and Practice (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994). For more on the
context of postwar destruction that renewed calls for preservation, see Francesca Ammon, Bulldozer: Demolition
and Clearance of the Postwar Landscape (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016).
5 Mike Wallace, Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1996), 178-182.

6
nation’s first open-air outdoor museum when it opened to the public in 1933.6 These are early examples
of industrialists redirecting public attention to the past.
Manifestations of “Boom”
A span of 45 years separates the earliest postindustrial tourist site in this study from the latest.
In addition to the chronological disjuncture, the case studies examine different industries, each with
their own technologies and histories of development and decline. Apart from the separation of
production from the tourist experience, what holds together these disparate case studies as a
homogenous genre of tourism? I contend it is their collective retreat to the turn of the century. The sites
in question return to the past, predominantly to their “boom” years in the late-nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries when the American economy was on the ascent. These case studies collectively
exhibit a cultural fixation with a moment of industrial promise in the nation—a moment which manifests
in unique and distinctive ways in this story. For the oil industry, we see fixation on an oil gusher and the
haphazard construction of boomtowns that followed. For the iron and steel industry, we harken back to
the roar of vertically integrated blast furnace complexes that heavily relied on dangerous and
backbreaking labor. In manufacturing industries, we see a focus on the assembly line and the speed with
which popular goods were produced. Gushers, boomtowns, blasts, explosions, and the relentless speed
of the assembly line all signal a moment of industrial dynamism and immense scale of production. It is
the loss of this dynamic moment that postindustrial tourist sites in the late twentieth century seek to
recapture through their turn-of-the-century theming.
As with most memorialization, however, the return to the past says a great deal more about the
redevelopers crafting these popular attractions than it does the subject being valorized. This retreat to
the turn of the century unfolded amid a nation deindustrializing. Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison,
6
Ibid., 183.

7
two economists commissioned by a coalition of trade unions and community groups to explain the
economic and political causes of deindustrialization, believed the answer to be the ease with which
corporate executives moved capital. Their research culminated in The Deindustrialization of America:
Plant Closings, Community Abandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry (1982). At its core,
Bluestone and Harrison’s study discusses capital mobility. It is the shift in capital mobility, particularly in
the 1970s, that alters the balance of power between labor and capital in the latter’s favor. Bluestone and
Harrison define deindustrialization as the “widespread, systematic disinvestment in the nation’s basic
productive capacity.”7 A central point the economists make is that this process does not just happen, but
rather is the product of “conscious decisions” made by corporate managers “to move a factory from one
location to another, to buy up a going concern or to dispose of one, or to shut down a facility
altogether”—all of which is driven by the desire for greater and greater profits, no matter the cost to
local industry or workers.8
How the postindustrial tourist attractions in question returned to the turn of the century, both
physically in their redevelopment and narratively through their interpretation, is the subject of the study.
So too is the question of why they did so. For each case study, its turn-of-the-century theming does
cultural work on multiple levels. What did the respective manifestations of “boom” accomplish for the
sites in question? I argue the historicization of the sites’ industrial image around the turn of century
produced two effects.
First, the turn-of-the-century theming offered a blueprint for communities to remember their socalled “glory days” when their cities, and regions, were ripe with economic growth. A cultural fixation
with the historical moment of industrial strength gave these places a way to grapple with the ravages of
7 Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community
Abandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry (New York: Basic Books, 1982), 6.
8
Ibid., 15.

8
deindustrialization and unfettered capital mobility. This effect, however, which communities often
achieved by looking back with proverbial rose-colored glasses, often contributed to an unintended
obfuscation of many important social issues unfolding across the country in the 1970s and beyond. Such
issues might be the circuitous and opaque ways in which corporate decision-makers moved capital,
ultimately leading to widespread job loss and changes in the character of a place. The historicization of
industry, presented in both these sites and in popular culture representations, reifies an image of
industry rooted in the past. The normalization of this historicized image hinders understanding of what
industry looks like today, which can often be quite different than its historical iterations. It also distracts
from where production occurs today—usually (deliberately) out of sight of the average consumer. This
masking of ongoing production, whether intentional or not, signifies an important development in the
evolution of industry’s image. By the 1970s, the factory, whose smokestacks once belched soot and
smoke into the atmosphere, no longer represents industrial prowess, but rather environmental
degradation. Other issues more generally relate to the cultural malaise affecting much of the nation
around this time or socioeconomic issues such as homelessness and racial and class disparity in previous
workforces. This dissertation tracks a variety of such issues that the historicization of industry’s image at
these sites has unintentionally obscured.
The second effect that the theming of industry around its turn-of-the-century past is one of
economic and cultural triumph. The consistency with which disparate sites historicized their image to
circa 1900 demonstrates that redevelopers viewed this era as a marketable, viable theme to compete
alongside the ever-increasing number of tourist attractions on offer in theme parks and entertainment
hubs in late-twentieth-century America. The case studies presented here collectively represent
resounding success stories of adaptation. These are stories of local communities banding together to
usher their own towns and cities into the service sector. Many of the studies in Jefferson Cowie’s and
Joseph Heathcott’s Beyond the Ruins reveal “how people accommodate loss” in the face of structural

9
changes beyond their control.9 Countering scholarly and media coverage that portrays communities left
behind as passive victims of corporate decision-making, a look at postindustrial tourism shows a
landscape of communities taking the reins themselves. They have done so by creating new economies of
tourism that both look to the future and retain past legacies, even if selective ones.10
How these communities interpret their industrial legacies remains a complicated subject, but
with corporations abandoning their communities, the workers, their families, and local municipalities
were able to take control of the means of production. Even if turned off, they have become productive in
a new sense, producing experiences and events, serving as film locations, and sometimes producing
goods on-site to preserve the craftmanship. Where these places once symbolized the strength of
American industry, they now denote the resilience and adaptability of American community. This is a
study of deindustrialization monetized, but the profits stay local. The project, then, does not suggest
outsiders have appropriated working-class culture for the benefit and profit of others.11 In most cases,
9
Joy L. Hart and Tracy E. K’Meyer, “Worker Memory and Narrative: Personal Stories of Deindustrialization in
Louisville, Kentucky,” in Beyond the Ruins: The Meanings of Deindustrialization, eds. Jefferson Cowie and Joseph
Heathcott (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 303. For more on the commonality of declension narratives in
deindustrialization literature, see Andrew R. Highsmith, “Decline and Renewal in North American Cities” Journal of
Urban History 37, no. 4 (2011): 619-626.
10 This story fits within the paradigm of other scholars of deindustrialization who have examined how working-class
communities have learned to survive, adapt, and thrive when faced with the realities of corporate abandonment.
See, for example: Dudley, The End of the Line; Jeremy Brecher, Banded Together: Economic Democratization in the
Brass Valley (Working Class in American History Series) (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011); Michael S. Foley,
Front Porch Politics: The Forgotten Heyday of American Activism in the 1970s and 1980s (New York: Hill & Wang,
2013).
11 One debate around working-class responses to deindustrialization centers the concept of “Rust Belt Chic,” what
Sherry Lee Linkon defines “rust belt chic” as “commentary and narrative, produced by journalists and creative
writers but also urban planners and local activists,” historically aware but primarily concerned with “personal and
civic reinvention.” The subgenre, often poems, photographs, and memoirs, celebrates working-class culture, but it
tends to also skew idealistic and nostalgic. Many of its contributors, furthermore, are often outsiders to the cities
they write about. Are “rust belt chic” creations appropriating working-class culture from the outside, or reclaiming
it from the inside? Linkon remains somewhat ambivalent of the genre, noting this fine line between authenticity
and appropriation. See Linkon, The Half-Life of Deindustrialization, 132; see also, Patrick J. Manning, “Toward Rust
Belt Aesthetics: Exploring the Cultural Projects of the Deindustrialized U.S. Midwest,” (PhD diss., McMaster
University, 2016).

10
the local communities driving these efforts have reaped the fruits of their labor directly. There is a simple
explanation as to why these sites have succeeded: people want to visit them.
Reception and the Three Impulses
In addition to asking how and why these postindustrial tourist attractions returned to circa 1900,
and what effects this historicization has elicited, the dissertation asks another question: why do people
want to visit these sites? Tourists have been visiting industrial sites in the United States since the mid-tolate nineteenth century. A key element that distinguishes the postindustrial tourist sites in discussion
here are the motivations that drive tourists to visit them. I argue that there are three impulses
motivating tourists to visit postindustrial sites: education, nostalgia, and adventure. The first impulse is
that of the industrial tourist, dating back to late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century factory tourism.
These tourists, largely white European and upper- or middle-class visitors, sought to see how products
were manufactured in large-scale industrial sites. Largely didactic, it showcases what Neil Harris has
called a taste for the “operational aesthetic.”12 The second impulse is that of the heritage tourist,
contemporaneous in the United States with the rise of public history and resurgence of the preservation
movement in the 1970s. Heritage tourists sought to stem the tide of what Joseph Schumpeter has called
the “creative destruction” of capitalism—its tendency to create and destroy in its wake before recreating
something more profitable.13 Driven by nostalgia, this impulse is typically more of a local phenomenon,
with people from within the community seeking to maintain relevance among the swelling number of
tourist attractions while spinning a warm and fuzzy, if selective, memory of their industrial past.
12 Neil Harris, “The Operational Aesthetic,” in Humbug: The Art of P. T. Barnum (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1973).
13 Sharon Zukin, Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991),
4-5.

11
The final impulse is that of the urban explorer, a modified iteration of the nineteenth-century
flâneur. The advent of online blogs and forums in the 1990s offered new methods of communication for
age-old practices of exploration and discovery.14 Typically a middle-class youth, the urban explorer
sought out a sense of adventure, thrill, and danger through illicit exploration of abandoned and decaying
industrial ruins. Searching for a sense of novelty, of something not just illicit, but off-limits to the average
tourist, motivates the urban explorer to seek out mines, mills, and other industrial structures. A key
element driving this sense of adventure is the scale of the structures being navigated, which often
borders on the sublime. The absence of large-scale industrial production from the daily experiences of
an increasingly office-dominated, white-collar society adds allure to these previously productive spaces.
The combination of these three impulses provides the tourist with an entertaining experience in which
our images and understandings of industry undergo conscious and intuitive transformations. In their
conversion into tourist attractions, the industrial sites themselves undergo important and often dramatic
changes. Old meanings resurface and vanish while new meanings manifest through the experience of
visiting industrial sites for entertainment. Industry to the average visitor no longer represents a
dangerous site of production, but rather a fun place of consumption.
Each chapter in this dissertation presents a unique balance between these three impulses. Every
postindustrial tourist site I examine produces cultural work on multiple levels, providing a sense of
education, of nostalgia, and of adventure. But no two sites share an equal mixture of these components.
Determining which impulse, if any, demands more attention than others in any given case study remains
an ultimately subjective endeavor.15 These sites offer a range of meanings, layered within the built
14 The historiography of the flâneur exploring urban street culture is extensive. A good starting point is Walter
Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (1982; Cambridge: Belknap Press,
2002).
15 I employ Raymond Williams’s theoretical framework of residual and emergent forms of culture to understand
and describe the balance between, and coexistence of, these three impulses at each site. While we can view the
didactic impulse lingering on from an earlier era when the nation’s industrial output had just put it on the map as a
world power, emergent cultures of heritage and urban exploration were simultaneously coming into the fold as

12
environment and the interpretations provided. Who the tourists are, where they are from, and their
backgrounds also influences motive and reception. Locals who knew of or had family members working
at the site before its conversion into a tourist attraction are more likely to feel nostalgic than a
dispassionate visitor from another part of the world. The visitor demographic, moreover, changes over
time and with it, reasons for visiting. In the case of postindustrial tourism, these sites are exceptions to
the norm—the norm being the demolition of industrial structures once they have outgrown their
productivity. Of the hundreds of turn-of-the-century blast furnaces that once dotted the American
landscape, only three remain as tourist sites. 16
Three additional currents run through the case studies comprising this study. First, this
dissertation tracks how redevelopers rendered these sites safe and accessible for visitors. The end of
industrial production did not mean that these sites were shorn of their inherent risk and danger. The
question of visitor safety remains central to the discussion, and underscores the argument that a sense
of adventure, thrill, and risk drives visitation. One method of determining visitor safety is analyzing the
choreography of tourist experience at each site. How do postindustrial attractions welcome visitors to
explore their spaces? By what routes are guests directed? To what extent are visitors allowed to explore
the spaces uninhibited, and how have concerns of safety and accessibility constricted these
opportunities? A second current underlines the question of narrative control. The story of postindustrial
American industry declined, abandoned industrial spaces increased, and nascent cultural practices emerged later
in the century. These emergent and residual forms themselves exist under Williams’s rubric of dominant,
alternative, and oppositional cultures. See Raymond Williams, “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural
Theory,” New Left Review 0, no. 82 (Nov. 1973): 3-14.
16 In addition to Birmingham’s Sloss Furnaces, the subject of Chapters 7 and 8, there remains Rivers of Steel in
Homestead, PA, and Steelstacks in Bethlehem, PA. Several scholars tackling the question of class have already
shown how the process of deindustrialization, and specifically the demolition of factories, can be simultaneously
interpreted in divergent ways depending on one’s class background. See Kathryn Marie Dudley, The End of the
Line: New Lives in Postindustrial America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994; see also Steven High and
David W. Lewis’s chapter “Out of Place: The Plant Shutdown Stories of Sturgeon Falls (Ontario) Paperworkers,” in
Corporate Wasteland: The Landscape and Memory of Deindustrialization (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007),
91-118.

13
tourism is also one of the gradual sanitization of narrative. Who tells the stories told on-site, whether it
be a former coal miner with decades of experience or an animatronic Hershey Kiss, radically alters the
messaging. The case studies include both extremes, but also speak to the shifting terrain as these sites
move further and further away from their industrial roots and the workers who toiled in these spaces.
Lastly, this study asks how popular culture representations—particularly film and television—have
informed, and have been informed by, these postindustrial sites. Several studies showcase a symbiotic
relationship between their built environments and representations on screen, especially when used as
filming locations.
An Industrial Theme
Michael Sorkin defines postmodernism broadly as the “weaving of ever more elaborate fabrics
of simulation, about successive displacement of ‘authentic’ signifiers.” Sorkin and his fellow essayists in
Variations on a Theme Park track the “growing hegemony of the simulacrum” in society.17 Eschewing the
Modernist idiom “form follows function,” postmodern architects thus turned to theme as a way to
reimbue built structures with symbolic meaning. In the social and economic context of the late twentieth
century—a time when consumption had firmly displaced production as the governing means by which
social identity formed—the use of theming served commercial motives in important ways. Mark
Gottdiener provides the clearest discussion of this changing aesthetic and architectural practice in the
1970s and beyond. In The Theming of America: American Dreams, Media Fantasies, and Themed
Environments, Gottdiener argues that theming was (and continues to be) “increasingly used by
businesses faced with intense competition in economic sectors with products that are essentially similar,
17 Michael Sorkin, “See You in Disneyland,” in Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of
Public Space, ed. Michael Sorkin (New York: Hill & Wang, 1992), 229, 231. Much of this work builds on the
theoretical foundations of Jean Baudrillard. See, for example, Baudrillard, “The Precession of the Simulacrum,” in
Simulacra and Simulation (1981). Baudrillard points out that simulations can often be experienced as more real
than the real itself.

14
such as tourism, casino gambling, restaurants, theme parks, and mall shopping,” presenting otherwiseidentical spaces as “novel, entertaining, and fashionable.”18 Stuart Ewen’s point that (advertised) mass
consumption provided the solution to overproduction—what Gottdiener calls the realization problem—
has given rise to thematic environments as an outgrowth of advertising and marketing strategies.19
These approaches stress a product’s image over its use-value. Concerning places, the same holds true.
Postindustrial tourist sites monetize the image of industry, not industry itself. Commercial venues where
goods, services, or experiences can be purchased serve as physical extensions of TV, magazine, and other
forms of advertising. Themed spaces, Gottdiener argues, thus “call forth that part of our identities that
revels in the act of consumption—our consuming-self.”20
The use of themed space as a commercial vernacular developed simultaneous to
deindustrialization and the rise of postindustrial tourism in late-twentieth-century America. Learning
from Las Vegas (1972) provided a scathing critique of Modernist architecture, looking instead to the sign
and symbol which proliferated on the Vegas Strip as a taxonomy for what would soon be called
postmodern architecture. The work of Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour
demonstrates two crucial points for a study of postindustrial tourism. First, the authors explain how the
gaudy symbolism underlying the Vegas Strip’s commercial architecture embodied an escapist ethos. The
18 Mark Gottdiener, The Theming of America: American Dreams, Media Fantasies, and Themed Environments
(Boulder: Westview Press, 2001), 145. One need only look to the Las Vegas Strip for evidence of common themes,
which according to Gottdiener, represent a limited repertoire due to “corporate control of theming that seeks
markets through appeals to the lowest common denominator” 176. Some examples are: tropical paradise, the
Wild West, classical civilization, nostalgia and retro, and the urban motif.
19 Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture (1976; New
York: Basic Books, 2001), 23-30. Ewen critically argues that corporations sought to “consumerize the worker” in
order to pacify more radical alternatives as workers had become increasingly radicalized and disaffected by the
routine and monotony of assembly-line factory work (28). The world of consumption made appealing through
advertising thus neutralized threats to the capitalist order. For more early works of advertising critique, see, Vance
Packard, The Hidden Persuaders (1957); Judith Williamson, Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and the Meaning of
Advertising (Boston: Marion Boyars, 1978); Daniel Pope, The Making of Modern Advertising (New York: Basic
Books, 1983); Richard Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears, eds., The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American
History, 1880-1920 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983).
20 Ibid., 151.

15
theming of casino resorts reminded patrons “of something else, perhaps of harems or the Wild West in
Las Vegas.” These themed spaces transported guests, ensuring “the quality of being an oasis in a perhaps
hostile context”—in this case, the desert heat. Most importantly, these spaces offered the “ability to
engulf visitors in a new role: for three days one may imagine oneself a centurion at Caesars Palace…
rather than a salesperson from Des Moines, Iowa.”21 The Strip’s commercial architecture, the authors
argued, offered a window into modern life. It pinpointed the doldrums of daily living—often
characterized by white-collar office work. It also highlighted the spaces of fantasy into which these
workers, plagued by boredom, sought to escape.
Could a turn-of-the-century, historicized image of industry function as such a place of escape by
the late twentieth century? Venturi, Brown, and Izenour did not suggest so, but they did highlight a
second critical element of this story. The authors argue that Modernist architects, while claiming to have
eschewed symbolism, embraced this exact era of industrial architecture primarily for its symbolic
content. Modernist buildings were “explicitly adapted from” factories, grain elevators, and steamships—
to name a few—“largely for their symbolic content, because industrial structures represented, for
European architects, the brave new world of science and technology.” Venturi, Brown, and Izenour
conclude their point by noting that Modernist architects, in discarding the obsolete symbolism of
historical eclecticism, simply “substituted that of the industrial vernacular.”22
If Modernist architects embraced the image of turn-of-the-century industry because it
represented the promise of science and technology, what does a return to this vernacular, through its
preservation and re-creation, say about society in the late twentieth century? What would need to
happen for a turn-of-the-century, industrial theme to take root alongside ancient pyramids and medieval
21 Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas: Revised Edition (1972;
Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977), 53.
22 Ibid., 135.

16
castles? The answer is deindustrialization. This phenomenon, over the course of several decades,
provided the geographic separation between the average American and their visual engagement with
industrial production, while the historicization of these sites created temporal distance. This separation
was both economic and cultural. The former unfolded through the physical transfer of factories, and
jobs, abroad. The latter materialized as American workers, reeling from the negative effects of these
economic changes, looked to the haven of the past for comfort, security, and eventually, profit.
The successful theming of these former worksites relies on redevelopers’ ability to create a
temporal separation from the present realities of job loss and deindustrialization. Distance and erasure
are two essential qualities of a subject as it morphs into a theme. The subject must be historically far
enough in the past to feel foreign and exotic, and the space must feel exclusive—a realm to which one
can escape from the tedium of white-collar work. Disneyland’s Main Street, U.S.A. held popular appeal in
1955 because Southern California, and the nation at large, had witnessed an exodus from downtowns to
the suburbs in the preceding decades. The rampant demolition of America’s industrial landscape in the
late twentieth century certainly rendered the remaining few sites exclusive. Deindustrialization’s ability
to distance and erase industry from our collective vantage point has seeded fertile ground on which
postindustrial tourism could grow. In other words, industry in its years of decline donned a mask of
historicization, championing its most prominent moment at the dawn of the twentieth century. As the
sun set on industrial communities throughout America, redevelopers and local communities painted
metaphoric sunrises on their dormant factories’ facades.
This tactic has contributed to the creation of a turn-of-the-century industrial theme—one that
popular culture representations, particularly in film and television, have proliferated. It relies on the
vernacular architecture of industrial sites typically built in the late-nineteenth or early-twentieth
centuries. Preservationists and redevelopers, as we will see, have played an active role in facilitating a
turn-of-the-century focus at such sites. Visitors are therefore not just (physically) adventuring into

17
previously inaccessible sites; they are also (temporally) journeying back in time to an ostensibly longgone era of industrial might. What are the defining characteristics of this turn-of-the-century industrial
theme? It includes a rusting color palette dominated by grays and browns, inclusion of heavy machinery
and tools, and a labyrinth of exposed gears, valves, pistons, flywheels, and other industrial forms dotting
the landscape. These tourist sites serve as centers of learning how production occurred, but the
presence of so many machines and working parts simultaneously renders these processes unintelligible.
The confusion heightens the allure of these sites and enhances their appeal as sites for exploration.
Changing Proximity
The question remains of how the phenomena of late-twentieth-century capital mobility and
abandoned ruins have combined to inform our image of industry. A cultural consequence of this capital
mobility concerns the changing proximity to, and understanding of, factories at work. In short, Americans
after the 1970s had much less direct visual access to the typical factory that dominated skylines in
preceding decades. In Out of Sight: The Long and Disturbing Story of Corporations Outsourcing
Catastrophe, Erik Loomis explores the question of visibility of industrial production. By the 1970s, he
writes, the deleterious and harmful effects of industrial production on both humans and the
environment had largely receded from view of the average American as new regulations and reforms
took effect. Corporations meanwhile “moved their operations across the globe to escape these very
regulations… [where they] recreate the old toxic and unsafe environments.”23 If corporations’ perennial
quest for cheap labor drove them abroad, what do we make of the factories that remained behind?
Steven High, in Industrial Sunset: The Making of North America’s Rust Belt, 1969-1984, captures
an additional component of industry’s evolving image. Between 1945 and 1986, High argues, the very
23 Erik Loomis, Out of Sight: The Long and Disturbing Story of Corporations Outsourcing Catastrophe (New York: The
New Press, 2015), 8.

18
appearance of factories built in the U.S. changed dramatically. During this time, plant design shifted to
what High calls a “post-industrial aesthetic,” which reflected values about the environment and the
nature of progress. Behind newly designed facades, the old factory persisted, but these structures
appeared healthier and more sanitized than ever before. He writes, “Behind the more agreeable mask of
the post-industrial plant hid a corporation increasingly unwilling to put down roots. Portrayed as a plant
or a tree in a suburban garden, the post-industrial factory had in fact become much less rooted than an
earlier generation of polluting factories.”24 The older images of industry—oil derricks, stone flour mills,
abandoned mines, rusting blast furnaces, and above all else, the smokestack factory—continue to play a
significant role in shaping the American public’s understanding of industry, while active production
occurring elsewhere looks anything but industrial on the surface. Behind this new façade, High argues,
the factory “persisted, smaller, more sanitized, and more disposable than before.”25 The historicized
image of industry postindustrial sites presented, then, played a role in severing what people see from
present-day industrial output. This rupture between past “image” and present “reality” reveals the
crucial role postindustrial tourist sites play in our collective understanding of American industry.
The vanishing act of deindustrialization and our changing proximity to active industry have
collectively laid the foundation for these postindustrial sites to craft an image of industry that signifies
fun. In the process, the factory regains its allure, but no longer as a symbol of industrial might. Silenced
and shorn of its polluting potential, the factory now represents an exotic place of mystery, waiting to be
discovered by those curious enough to venture inside. Postindustrial sites present their venues as places
of danger and mystery, inviting curious passersby to explore their inner workings. Immersion and
entertainment reign supreme. Guests descend into a coal mine; they walk in the shadow of a blast
24 Steven High, Industrial Sunset: The Making of North America’s Rust Belt, 1969-1984 (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2015), 90.
25 Ibid., 75.

19
furnace that once roared. They ascend a grain elevator, or “play” the cacao bean as it journeys through a
roasting oven. If we see industry as a place of entertainment, a theme to be consumed, it unfolds
alongside the inhibition of these places’ political potential. This transformation mutes their salience as a
reminder of the socioeconomic inequalities that rendered them deindustrialized in the first place. The
consumer-driven logic of late-twentieth-century tourism and its reliance on visuality and experience has
stymied the political potential of abandoned structures. This dissertation thus demonstrates how our
image of industry has moved firmly into the realm of consumption, a theme to be consumed alongside
other distant and reductive aesthetics. The key to postindustrial tourism’s role in this evolution is the
changing proximity to industrial sites.
Chapter Sequencing
The dissertation is divided into three parts. Part 1 lays the historiographic groundwork for three
important cultural phenomena that underscore our study: industrial tourism, heritage, and ruins.
Chapter 1 explores the history of industrial tourism throughout the United States by looking at Hershey’s
factory tour, which operated for much of the twentieth century. This chapter underlines what Hershey
gained from opening its production processes to viewers. It also highlights the factory tour’s role in
forging a bond between visitors, workers, and the local community that produced a strong sense of place
for the town. The logic of industrial tourism, and this sense of place, both represent starting points from
which postindustrial tourism would evolve and adapt in the ensuing decades.
Chapter 2 examines the creation of the Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum in
Beaumont, Texas. The museum’s debut in 1976 coincided with the nation’s Bicentennial and the turn to
local heritage. Local history, genealogy, and folk culture governed celebrations across the country at a
time when trust in the federal government buckled under the weight of one crisis after another. Visiting
a recreated, open-air boomtown, where rough-and-tumble wildcatters drilled for oil at the turn of a

20
promising century, seemed a logical reprieve from Watergate, Vietnam, and more directly, the 1973
OPEC Oil Embargo. Chapter 2 thus signals the first postindustrial retreat to the turn of the century,
symbolized here by the wooden oil derrick. The symbolic power of this image, its dispersal throughout
popular culture, and its animated recreation with the aid of entertainment design professionals,
provided a visual façade for an otherwise opaque and often-maligned industry.
Chapter 3 moves to the banks of the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis, exploring the
adaptive reuse of riverfront properties in the former “Flour Milling Capital of the World.” After corporate
relocations inland to cheaper and more spacious suburban locations, a small army of city planners,
private developers, and local preservationists transformed the abandoned riverfront into a tourist,
commercial, and residential hub. Structures left behind became beacons for both urban explorers and
homeless people. The sense of danger and thrill urban explorers felt while climbing through derelict
tunnels or grain elevators permeated the preservationist ethos for the city’s “Mill District.” This chapter
reveals how the unexpected use of fire-induced ruins kickstarted the Minneapolis “Mill District’s”
antiquated charm.
Mine tourism proliferated across the country through the latter half of the twentieth century. In
Part 2, we head into three of these mines—spaces that best dramatize the physical transformations
needed to change former sites of industrial activity into safe and accessible tourist sites. Chapter 4
explores the physical changes needed to transform West Virginia’s Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine from a
“groundhog hole” into one of the nation’s earliest and most successful mine tours. This chapter
highlights the extreme divergence between the tour experience and that of actual coal mine spaces, as
well as the amalgamation of different eras of mining practices and machinery. Nevertheless, Beckley also
complicates the idea that all postindustrial tourism masks the exploitation underlining production. Tours
given by former miners offer a sobering picture of their labor history in engaging and meaningful ways.
Chapter 5 sends us down a vertical mine shaft into one of Kansas’s most expansive salt mines, adding the

21
wrinkle of active, continued production to the equation. This chapter explores how a small team of
individuals across three institutions worked together to establish creative ways to reuse the mined space
for new purposes, including tourism.
Chapter 6 takes us to Bisbee, Arizona, where residents embraced mine tourism to stay afloat
economically after the departure of Phelps Dodge Corporation in 1975. This chapter challenges the
ostensibly clear-cut distinction between active and past industry by exploring the lingering effects of
mining on the environment. Left with a toxic wasteland, residents old (and new) embraced this
landscape scarred by heavy extraction to buttress a turn-of-the-century image of the city that held
popular tourist appeal. In Bisbee, we see codification of a turn-of-the-century industrial theme that has
since proliferated through other mine towns—both historic and fictional—such as Tombstone, Calico
Ghost Town, and Disneyland’s Big Thunder Mountain area. The mines discussed in Part 2 are spaces that,
for the most part, had remained inaccessible to the average visitor until their closure. Innovative
solutions were often required to render these subterranean spaces safe for tourist exploration.
Part 3 examines both failed and successful attempts to create postindustrial theme park rides.
The widespread and systematic deindustrialization of the iron and steel industries in the 1970s and
1980s left dormant many blast furnace complexes, although a handful have been saved. The earliest of
these efforts came in Birmingham, Alabama with the preservation of Sloss Furnaces—the subject of
Chapters 7 and 8. Chapter 7 begins with a portrait of Birmingham’s participation in the 1904 World’s Fair
in St. Louis, and its contribution of an iron sculpture of the Roman god Vulcan to the fair. It then tracks
the legacy of this world’s fair boosterism through the remainder of the twentieth century, ending with
repeated and stubborn attempts to convert the dormant Sloss Furnaces into the centerpiece of a world’s
fair complex. Chapter 8 then explores the more modest redevelopment of Sloss Furnaces into a selfguided tourist attraction, and the evolution of industry’s image from that of the neoclassical Vulcan to
the rusting hulk of the furnaces that forged him. Long awed from afar, the closure of large-scale blast

22
furnace operations in Birmingham facilitated the opportunity to visit this previously inaccessible site upclose and explore its guts and inner workings. The proximity with which guests could now engage with
such a monumental space engendered news ways to experience and understand industry.
Chapter 9 returns to Hershey, Pennsylvania, the town in which we began this story. Hershey had
always been a company uniquely situated at the crossroads of production and consumption through its
chocolate factory and adjacent theme park. In 1973, these twin poles collided when the company
replaced its longstanding factory tour with Chocolate World. Sitting within the corporate visitor center
model that Hershey would pioneer, the dark ride simulated the production process of turning cacao
beans into chocolate bars. It thus drew inspiration not just from the factory tour it replaced, but more
importantly, the company’s nearby theme park. After fifty years of operation, Chocolate World
represents the fullest and most successful theming of industry to date, but ramifications for the
surrounding community, as we will see, were manifold. Chocolate World dismantled the acute sense of
place its predecessor had embodied, instead serving as the flagship institution of a company looking
outward. Finally, the conclusion looks briefly at two failed industrial theme parks run by Six Flags:
AutoWorld, an indoor theme park in Flint, Michigan that opened in 1984, and the Power Plant in
Baltimore, Maryland, which debuted in 1985. Both case studies demonstrate a continuation of the
theme park and entertainment professionals’ involvement in rendering our collective image of industry
fun and exciting. The failure of these sites, however, enables us to ask a simple question: why?
There remains powerful explanatory force in describing two centuries of American history as the
gradual transition from a nineteenth-century production-oriented economy to a twentieth-century
society driven by consumption. Few topics more clearly highlight the tensions inherent within debates
about production and consumption than that of postindustrial tourism. The emergence of postindustrial
tourist sites at the critical moment when capital breached its “social contract” with labor in the 1970s
signals a watershed moment in American history. As “spaces of production [receded] into the historic

23
vernacular,” Sharon Zukin writes, “people [experienced] a qualitative shift in the source of social
meaning from the sphere of production to consumption.”26 By the 1970s, the “loosening of the
connection between work and identity” represented one of deindustrialization’s most enduring social
changes for laborers across the country.27 These case studies show that postindustrial tourism enabled
many communities to maintain this bond between work and identity, even if they needed to reshape it
for use in the service economy. In the process, a historicized image of industry emerged as a commercial
theme to be consumed by the visiting public.
This study also reveals, however, that there is demand for such sites. People want to visit them.
Each site examined has experienced (at least) several decades of success. Some have thrived for over
half a century as the nation’s most popular postindustrial tourist attractions, even if the genre has not
been known as such. Each case study either offers a ride, had ambitious plans for a ride, or showcases a
highly animated attraction employing entertainment-industry technology. Rather than creating these
experiences from scratch, most sites simply relied on their extant industrial forms of transportation to
create these attractions.28 These sites, in other words, are not simply memorials to a bygone era of
industrial history. The lone convergence of deindustrialization and heritage in the late twentieth century
might have created such a scenario. It is these phenomena’s inflection with the theme park and
26 Zukin, Landscapes of Power, 29, 38. On the timing of this shift, see Michael Kammen’s chapter “The Gradual
Emergence of Mass Culture and Its Critics,” in Kammen, American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and the
20th Century (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 162-189. See also, Lawrence B. Glickman, A Living Wage: American
Workers and the Making of Consumer Society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997); for an examination of the
evolution of the “work ethic” within this debate, see Daniel T. Rodgers, The Work Ethic in Industrial America, 1850-
1920, 2nd edition (1974; Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2014).
27 Cowie and Heathcott, Beyond the Ruins, 15. Building on what Dean MacCannell has called “involuted
differentiation,” Michael Sorkin comments on the “reinvention of labor as spectacle” in the second half of the
twentieth century. Noting that employees at Disney parks are referred to as “cast members,” their transformation
from workers into actors “presumably transforms their work into play.” See Sorkin, “See you in Disneyland,” in
Variations on a Theme Park, 228.
28 For a look at the symbiotic relationship between industrial technology and early amusement parks, see John F.
Kasson, Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century (New York: Hill & Wang, 1982).

24
entertainment industries that have given postindustrial tourism its unique quality, distinguishing this
form of remembrance from other heritage efforts.
Rust World populates the far reaches of the country—from Bisbee, Arizona to Beckley, West
Virginia, and from the Mississippi River’s northern reaches to the Texas Gulf Coast. In these spaces, the
earth’s natural resources—copper, coal, water, oil—tempted industrialists to extract, refine, and
manufacture goods of all sorts. Rust World’s presence, however, speaks to production of a different sort.
The looming presence of Disneyland, with the revolution in theme park design it engendered, and of the
Las Vegas Strip, with its postmodern architecture, is felt in even the remotest industrial landscapes of
these case studies. In many ways, this is a story of just how far Disneyland’s and Las Vegas’s influence
reached in the twentieth century’s final decades. This story unpacks how these sites, beacons of the
service economy, refracted the industrial spaces of the economy they replaced. Abandoned mines,
sulfur-laden oil fields, defunct blast furnaces, and simulated factories—these are the places that tell this
story. Their thematicization, with the aid of local preservationists, redevelopers, and of those designing
theme parks, casino resorts, and Hollywood sets, reveal two economies passing in the wind—one
dissipating, the other surging. The concoction created through these passing winds has become
postindustrial tourism. This genre has informed, and transformed, our image of industry in the last 50
years.

25
Chapter 1: Hershey’s Factory Tour and the Legacy of Industrial Tourism
Postindustrial tourism’s most direct lineage begins with the emergence of a new genre of
industrial tourism around the turn of the century. This chapter lays the foundation for a study of the
genre by examining its industrial tourist roots. The most obvious distinction between industrial tourism
and its “post” designation is the presence of active production. Whereas the tourist has been removed
from places of production in postindustrial tourism, earlier tourist opportunities such as Hershey’s plant
tour—one of numerous plant tours available in the early-twentieth-century United States—offered
visitors direct views of the many stages of manufacture. That is not to say that these views were
unadulterated. As we will see, companies used this mode of tourism as part of larger public relations
efforts to promote their products and generate goodwill among potential consumers.
The model town that Milton Hershey founded in 1903 for his employees was indelibly tied to the
plant and his company’s image. The company held a vested interest in its surrounding community and
the workers who lived in it. Early promotional efforts presented town and factory as one homogenous
entity. This link began to wane later in the twentieth century as Hershey (and many other corporations)
began investing capital elsewhere. The sense of place achieved through Hershey’s initial harmonization
of town and factory therefore represents a key factor in this story. It signifies the starting point from
which the story of postindustrial tourism deviates. It is the loss of this sense of place, I argue, that
communities across the country sought to reclaim and reestablish through postindustrial tourist sites in
an era of rampant deindustrialization. This chapter, then, uses Hershey’s longstanding plant tour and its
relation to the surrounding town, as well as the conditions which ultimately led to its closure in 1973, to
ground our study within the industrial tourist genre from which it developed.
As tourist opportunities arose in the late nineteenth century for a slowly budding middle class,
factories and other institutions were often featured as attractions alongside natural wonders. At a time

26
when idleness was considered suspect, people viewed these sites of production as “useful”
experiences.1
Interest in touring factories was linked to the popularity of world’s fairs and expositions,
many of which exhibited nascent machine technology to masses eager to watch the spectacle of largescale machinery at work. The unveiling of the Corliss Steam Engine at the American Centennial Exhibition
in Philadelphia in 1876 remains perhaps the most significant case of such spectacle in the U.S., but other
examples abound.2 Milton S. Hershey’s career was embedded within this urban-industrial landscape, and
his own foray into chocolate manufacturing began with his viewing a demonstration of German
chocolate-making equipment at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
After repeated failures as a businessman in Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York, Hershey finally
established the successful Lancaster Caramel Company in 1886. He decided to purchase the chocolatemaking equipment from Chicago and incorporated chocolate production into a wing of his caramel plant.
By 1901, he had earned $622,000 in sales from chocolate alone, realizing he would need larger facilities
to expand his chocolate-making ventures. Hershey purchased 600 acres of farmland in Derry Church,
Pennsylvania, his birthplace. The selection of such a rural location offered ideal conditions for milk
chocolate production given the nearby dairy farms. Derry Church, renamed Hershey in 1906, also offered
convenient rail lines to consumer markets after negotiations with the Pennsylvania and Reading Railroad
Company to relocate the Derry Church Station near his factory. The industrialist broke ground on his new
chocolate factory on March 2, 1903 and began production there in the summer of 1905.3
1
See, for example, Cindy Aron, Working at Play: A History of Vacations in the United States (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999) and Catherine Cocks, Doing the Town: The Rise of Urban Tourism in the United States, 1850-
1915 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). For a look at institutional tourism in the nineteenth century,
see Janet Miron, Prisons, Asylums, and the Public: Institutional Visiting in the Nineteenth Century (Buffalo:
University of Toronto Press, 2011).
2
See John F. Kasson, Civilizing the Machine: Technology and Republican Values in America, 1776-1900 (New York:
Hill & Wang, 1976), 139-180.
3
“Hershey Foods Corporation: A Brief History,” Accession 92004, Box 37, Folder 7, The Hershey Entertainment &
Resorts Company Collection, Hershey Community Archives, Hershey, Pennsylvania [hereafter HCA]; Memo to
Management newsletter, September 23, 1971, Unit 232 Shelf 9.1A, Box 1, Folder 36, The Hershey Company

27
Derry Church played another critical role in Hershey’s decision to relocate production to an
agricultural region. The industrialist planned to establish not just a chocolate factory, but a model
industrial community as well. Progressive logic underpinned Hershey’s decision to build an industrial
utopia on farmland that he viewed as an empty slate. He drew inspiration from other model towns built
by the likes of George Pullman and the Cadbury brothers in England, all of whom sought to avoid the
squalid living conditions and poor sanitation issues that plagued cities. The rapidity with which
industrialization took off in the late nineteenth century left many cities with inadequate infrastructure to
support the influx of incoming workers. The model community Hershey planned to build was not borne
from an altruistic perspective, but rather was seen as “an antidote to labor unrest.”4 The decision to
provide quality housing, a clean town with ample social amenities, and recreational space ultimately
stemmed from the belief that “attracting a socially aspirant workforce to the area” would increase
production.5
Improved living conditions meant more efficient and reliable workers. It is within this
Employee Newsletters Collection, HCA; Mary Davidoff Houts and Pamela Cassidy Whitenack, Hershey, Images of
America series (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2000), 36.
4 Michael D’Antonio, Hershey: Milton S. Hershey’s Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 101. See pages 101-105 for further discussion on the influence of the city beautiful
and country life movements on the development of Hershey’s planned community.
5 Helena Chance, “Chocolate heaven: productive consumption and corporate power in the recreational landscape
of Cadbury, Bournville and Hershey, Pennsylvania in the early twentieth century,” Studies in the History of Gardens
& Designed Landscapes: An International Quarterly 39, no. 1 (2019), 26.
Figure 1 – Bar card depicting sanitary milking machine at work. These barshaped postcards were automatically inserted into each 5¢ milk chocolate and
almond milk chocolate bars between 1909 and 1918. Author’s personal
collection.

28
context, and the desire to put employees’ living and working conditions on display, that Hershey’s plant
tour made sense from a corporate standpoint. The plant tour signified one of many views of a model
community guests were afforded when visiting the town. Hershey commissioned civil engineer Henry
Herr to design a company town and houses with indoor plumbing, central heating, electricity, and
gardens. Architect Emlen Urban, meanwhile, designed the factory and many of the public buildings that
would receive attention from tourists.6 Over the years, Hershey developed a trolley transit system that
connected the town with nearby communities, and a variety of public and social services, including the
Hershey Industrial School (for orphan boys), sports facilities, a community center, a hotel, a zoo, and, of
particular importance for this study, an amusement park.
Hershey opened picnic and pleasure grounds for his employees in 1907. He had set aside 150
acres of farmland north of the factory and town for a park, commissioning the landscape architect
Oglesby Paul, known for his work on Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, for its design. The park included
picnic sites, a bandstand, playgrounds, and a sports ground. Hershey Park emphasized “rational
recreation” in a similar manner to the “reform parks” springing up throughout the United States around
the turn of the century. While the park did offer recreational opportunities for company employees, it
simultaneously regulated employee morality. Public interest rapidly increased given the dearth of leisure
opportunities in the surrounding countryside. Visitors numbering in the thousands quickly took
advantage of the train and trolley line to descend on the factory town en masse, spending days in the
park and buying chocolate from booths stationed at the entrance.7
6
Ibid., 26.
7
Ibid., 26-27.

29
As public interest swelled, the model town continued to bolster its public amenities throughout
the 1910s and 1920s. In 1916, the town opened the Hershey Zoo, the largest free private zoo in the
country at that time. A 4,000-seat Convention Hall attracted national conventions and the likes of band
leaders such as John Philip Sousa. A visitors bureau opened in 1915 to coordinate growing demand for
factory tours, even though little record of this service exists prior to official documentation beginning in
1928.8 By the quarter mark of the century, Hershey had established itself as a renowned tourist
destination in central Pennsylvania. No corner of the industrial community was hidden from view, and
Milton viewed positive visitor reception of his model town, his amusement park, and his factory as
effective marketing. The aroma of chocolate emanating from the factory throughout the town served as
a constant but pleasant reminder to visitors of the town’s original purpose. Hershey’s plant tour
eventually established itself as the most popular attraction in town.
“One of the Wonders of the Industrial World”
Milton Hershey likely led the first tour of the plant himself in late 1904, before production had
even begun. Included on the tour were leaders from nearby communities, including a bank president, a
company official, a senator, and a doctor. The group of 20 men inspected the state-of-the-art factory,
8 Houts and Whitenack, Hershey, 54, 68; James D. McMahon, Jr., Built on Chocolate: The Story of the Hershey
Chocolate Company (Santa Monica: General Publishing Group, Inc., 1998), 120.
Figure 2 – Bar card depicting scene in Hershey Park, c. 1909-1918. Author’s personal collection.

30
which the Confectioners’ Journal claimed in 1905 was “the most complete of its kind in the world.”9 The
establishment of the visitors’ bureau in 1915 brought further organization to the tours, and by 1927 the
company formally offered free tours to the public. In the early years, visitors were conducted on a 45-
minute trip through the factory, escorted by uniformed guides. These guides, mostly women, memorized
and delivered speeches for each stop on the route. James T. Smith, one of the first tour guides, noted
that he “gave a short talk before entering each department, telling [visitors] something about the
operation, the quantities involved, and so on.” He remembered that if they “had two hundred people in
a day, that was big.” Most visitors came from nearby communities.10 Factory supervisors and sales
personnel mapped out a tour route early on, which including “an excellent cross-section of the complete
process,” from milk condensing and nib grinding through bar and Kiss molding and wrapping. The tour
route, however, changed numerous times through the years.11
The original factory had not been designed with a visitor program in mind. At some point after
1933, Milton converted a corner of the men’s lunch room into a lobby and set up a counter for chocolate
drinks to be served. The retrofitted lobby functioned as a hub where visitors would gather at tour’s end.
Guides served chocolate milk to guests, who could also buy chocolate products displayed behind a glass
counter. There was also a mail order counter for sending candy. Verna Stoltz, who managed the guides
from 1955 until the tours were discontinued, noted that during the winter months when there were
fewer guests, guides often served hot cocoa. Frank Simione, a Hershey employee, remembered that as a
kid a group of “ten or twelve of us [would go] through there at a time. The tour guides got to know us,
9 Betsy Rupe, “A Point of Interest: Hershey—Kiss It Good-bye,” Hershey Star, May 1973, Accession 200539, Box 1,
Folder 4, Don Papson Papers, The Hershey Company Collection, HCA.
10 “The Hershey Factory – a smash hit with the American tour public,” Crossroads 4, no. 3, Accession 200821, Box
38, Folder 4, The M.S. Hershey Foundation Collection, HCA.
11 “Hershey Plant Toured By Over 10 Million Visitors,” The Chocolate Press VI, no. 7 (July 1987), Accession 200821,
Box 38, Folder 4, The M.S. Hershey Foundation Collection, HCA; “Factory Guides: Instructions for factory tour
guides,” 1933, Accession 97004, Box 10, Folder 11, Private Individual Collection, HCA. A 1933 tour route included
many of these stops, as well as the Men’s Lunch Room.

31
and they used to laugh, because they knew that we were just in the day before and we were just going
through the plant to get that little cup of cocoa.” Smith recalled that company executives had to pass
through the converted lobby to reach their offices. It was “a common sight to see Mr. Hershey himself
chatting with the visitors.”12 Factory tours in the 1930s maintained an intimate and highly personal
quality. Crowds began to grow throughout the decade. By 1935, the factory tour reached its daily record
of 2,000 guests on a sunny summer day as the company realized the plant was becoming a national
tourist attraction. From 1928 through 1942, before suspending tours during World War II, a total of
680,000 people toured the plant.13
A 1940 tour route and list of instructions to guides provides an overview of what the average
visitor would have seen on a 40-minute Hershey plant tour in its early years. Guides were instructed to
“speak slowly and distinctly” and to remember that “everyone visiting this factory is a prospective
HERSHEY customer.” From the beginning, company executives understood the plant tour was more than
an educational tool for the public. Visitors began their experience near the end of the manufacturing
process, with the roasting of beans, grinding of “nibs,” and other steps withheld. The longitude
department signaled the first stop on the tour route, where visitors entered a room that the company
considered “the largest in the world devoted to one process of food making.” The 116 longitudinal
machines in the room initiated a process known as conching, whereby sugar, milk, and chocolate were
continually mixed for a minimum of 96 hours to produce “that degree of smoothness recognized in
Hershey’s Chocolate, but also [to develop] its fine aroma.” Rows of machines with long arms stirred the
liquid chocolate in giant vats, impressing on visitors’ the staggering scale of operations. Guests entered
what many considered to be the most impressive room first, whereas in the 1933 tour route, the
12 “Hershey Plant Toured By Over 10 Million Visitors,” The M.S. Hershey Foundation Collection; “The Hershey
Factory—a smash hit with the American touring public,” The M.S. Hershey Foundation Collection; Frank P.
Simione, interview by Shelley Brendel, August 3, 1993, 93OH09, transcript, 3, Oral History Collection, HCA.
13 Hershey Foods Corporation, Press Release, December 13, 1971, Accession 92004, Box 37, Folder 7, The Hershey
Entertainment & Resorts Company Collection, HCA.

32
longitude department was saved as the tour’s grand finale. “Visitors were always amazed by all the large
vats of chocolate,” recalled Stoltz.14
Guides then escorted visitors to a fifth-floor landing from which they could view “the immense
size of the factory and office buildings, occupying a floor space of about 55 acres.” After noting that
there were more than 3,000 employees in 1940, guides presented a slate of surprising information that
reveals an important facet of how the company viewed its industrial contributions. First, guides directed
guests’ attention to the large red brick buildings “seen above the treetops.” These were the Hershey
Consolidated Schools. Next, guides described the Hershey Community Building, which contained “a large
theatre, library, and all recreational facilities,” noting that “visitors are welcome.” Guides pointed out the
town’s new department store, its Ladies Club, and its state-of-the-art Hershey Sports Arena. Guides then
redirected their guests’ attention to Hershey Park, which in addition to regular amusements included
“beautiful floral displays, an electric fountain, a large zoo, conservatory and an eighteen-hole public golf
course as well as the most elaborate dance pavilion and outdoor swimming pool in the east.” Finally,
14 “Instructions to Guides, Visitors Route List, Questions and Answers,” 1940, Accession 200821, Box 38, Folder 4,
The M.S. Hershey Foundation Collection, HCA; “Factory Guides: Instructions to factory tour guides,” 1933, Private
Individual Collection; “Hershey Plant Toured By Over 10 Million Visitors,” The M.S. Hershey Foundation Collection.
Figure 3 – Bar card depicting a large room inside the Hershey plant, c. 1909-1918. Author’s personal
collection.

33
through the fifth-floor landing’s rear window, guides gestured to the imposing Hotel Hershey, built in
1933, and the Hershey Industrial School.15
With just one department covered, guides redirected guests’ attention outward through a series
of factory windows to examine what the town had to offer for residents and visitors. As only the second
stop on the tour route, it is important to note that executives likely did not view this as a brief interlude
between the sights and sounds of production, but rather as an integral element of their industrial
footprint. Hershey’s factory and town went hand in hand, signaling Milton Hershey’s Progressive ethos
that workers who received quality living conditions would ultimately work more reliably and more
efficiently. Boosterish executives instructed guides to tout what the company town had to offer from the
fifth-floor landing. This was done to both display the paternalistic and beneficent approach to its workers
and their lives, but also to encourage visitors to spend more time exploring Hershey outside the factory
walls. A 1947 employee handbook emphasized, “From all over the world people come to visit Hershey.
They don’t just come because we make chocolate bars or because Hershey is the leader of this
important industry. They come to see Hershey, one of the wonders of the industrial world. And they
leave with the feeling that they have seen a remarkable sight, and how fortunate people are who work
15 “Instructions to Guides, Visitors Route List, Questions and Answers,” 1940, The M.S. Hershey Foundation
Collection. The Q&As attached to the 1933 and 1940 “Instructions to Guides” included just as many entries for the
“Town of Hershey” as it did for “Questions Pertaining to the Factory.”
Figure 4 – Bar card showing the town’s public swimming pool, c. 1909-1918. Author’s personal
collection.

34
and live here.”16 When the handbook writer described Hershey as one of the “wonders of the industrial
world,” they meant both the factory and the town in which its workers lived. This link between factory
and town represented a vital part of Hershey’s early factory tours and the message it sought to convey to
potential customers.
After leaving the fifth-floor landing, guides escorted visitors to a series of departments that
largely followed the late stages of chocolate production. First was the Moulding Department, where the
chocolate was “automatically weighed, dropped into moulds, then passed over the tap tables.” Here,
tables shook the bars to remove air bubbles before transferring them to coolers where they were
“subjected to a temperature of 35 degrees at which [they] will harden within a half hour’s time.” Guests
then entered the Knockout Department on the fifth floor where “the bars are removed from the
moulds.”17 Helen Cappelli, one of the company’s first guides, recollected that “you couldn’t talk in that
room. It was so loud, you had to do the speech before you entered the department.”18 After the
Knockout room, guests entered the Wrapping Room and Box Department on the third floor, where the
bars were “enclosed in foil and then in the silver and maroon wrappers.” Guides noted that “the average
speed in packing is from 80 to 100 bars per minute.” Thus far guests were treated to a firsthand view of
many of the later stages of chocolate production, from conching in large vats to the moulding, cooling,
and wrapping of the company’s famous chocolate bars.
16 “Working at Hershey: A handbook and guide for the men and women at Hershey Chocolate Corporation,” 1947,
in McMahon, Jr., Built on Chocolate, 58-60.
17 “Instructions to Guides, Visitors Route List, Questions and Answers,” 1940, The M.S. Hershey Foundation
Collection.
18 Helen (Menicheschi) Cappelli, interview by Natalie Dekle, October 18, 1989, 89OH13, transcript, 15-16, Oral
History Collection, HCA.

35
Guides then escorted visitors to the second floor, where they were treated to a view of the Kiss
Department, “a complete unit in which [was] done the work from moulding the kisses to wrapping and
packing ready for shipment.” In other words, the Kiss Department featured all the previous stages of
production in one, but for another of Hershey’s most recognized products. The Kiss Department,
alongside the Longitude Department, quickly became a fan-favorite of the tour. “Kisses are moulded,”
the guides explained, “by dropping Milk Chocolate of proper consistency on a steel belt, striking the
chocolate with cold air causing the outer surface to instantly harden” so that the “kisses will retain their
shape.” Guests then viewed “the machines that wrap individual kisses in foil and automatically enclose
under the foil a small tissue bearing the words HERSHEY’S KISSES.” A line of women “inspect and remove
kisses that are imperfectly wrapped” before boxes were automatically filled, weighed, and hermetically
sealed for shipment. Finally, guides took guests to the Printing Department, located in a portion of the
new, windowless, air-conditioned portion of the factory.19 Margaret Uhrich Taylor, a former guide,
recalled that “nothing could take away the awe exhibited by young and old alike as they saw, for the first
19 “Instructions to Guides, Visitors Route List, Questions and Answers,” 1940, The M.S. Hershey Foundation
Collection.
Figures 5 and 6 – On the left is a view of visitors passing through the Kiss moulding department (c. 1950-1960) with no barrier between
guests and production. A man can be seen holding an unwrapped Kiss in his left hand, indicative of the health and sanitation concerns
the tour would face in its later years. On the right is a photo of tourists passing through the Kiss wrapping department, where they
watched female employees inspecting wrapped Kisses, c. 1954. Photos courtesy of the Hershey Community Archives.

36
time, the silver-tipped Kisses sliding down hills of conveyors, the seas of liquid chocolate in the conching
machines, and the Hershey chocolate bars marching through refrigeration units to wrapping
machines.”20 Taylor’s depiction of what visitors viewed within each department borders on sublime
description, with flowery language—“hills of conveyors” and “seas of liquid chocolate”—replacing the
actual mechanical processes.
Once guests returned to the visitors’ lobby, they received a small cup of chocolate milk. Over
time, however, this became impractical as numbers increased. Guests eventually received instead a gift
packet containing a chocolate bar, an envelope of instant mix, recipe leaflets, and a booklet titled “The
Story of Chocolate and Cocoa.”21 As early as the 1910s, the company’s Educational and Dietetic Bureau
had published a lithographed poster for use in public schools demonstrating a step-by-step process for
making chocolate, as well as a map of places around the world associated with chocolate production.22
Much of this didactic information gradually filtered into a larger lobby and visitors’ center which opened
in the early 1960s, featuring maps showing where raw materials were harvested, as well as display cases
of bean pods, processed materials, and finished products. Wall murals additionally detailed the history
20 “Tour Guide Reunion letters,” The M.S. Hershey Foundation Collection.
21 Hershey Foods Corporation, Press Release, December 13, 1971, The Hershey Entertainment & Resorts Company
Collection.
22 McMahon, Jr., Built on Chocolate, 66-71.
Figures 7 and 8 – On the left is a view of visitors receiving free samples of cocoa at the end of the Hershey factory tour, c. 1950-1960. Photo
courtesy of the Hershey Community Archives. On the right is a postcard depicting the updated visitors’ reception center inside the factory,
including displays showing the origins of raw materials and manufacturing processes of chocolate products, c. 1971. Author’s personal collection.

37
of chocolate and chocolate-making.23 This information also filtered into “The Story of Chocolate and
Cocoa” booklet that the company distributed to guests at the end of the factory tour. One version, which
circulated around the 1950s, again reinforces the link between factory and town.
The first four pages feature excerpts titled “The Discovery of Chocolate” and “Cacao: where and
how it is grown.” These pages contextualize the company’s chocolate production within a global market
of cacao bean cultivation in the tropical areas of South and Central America, the West and East Indies,
and West Africa. The booklet describes how cacao bean “pods are gathered in heaps, where natives—
often women—cut them open with sharp, rounded knives and scoop out the cocoa beans.” The
booklet’s transition on the next page to “The Manufacture of Chocolate” in the “world’s largest
chocolate manufacturing plant” highlights the quasi-imperial dimensions of the company’s global
footprint. The stark transition from primitive extraction with knives and scoops to state-of-the-art
production facilities in Hershey reinforces the latter as a beacon of technological progress in the modern
world. After seven pages of didactic, thick description of the various stages of chocolate manufacture,
the booklet concludes with its longest, eight-page section titled “The Community of Hershey.” Here, as
on the fifth-floor landing during the factory tour, Hershey extolled the virtues of its company town and
the myriad amenities it offered to residents and guests alike.
24
The booklet, paired with the 1940 tour route, demonstrate several defining features of earlytwentieth-century industrial tourism. What the company offered to visitors, both as tours and material,
promoted its corporate image and products. The factory tour provided an educational view of chocolate
manufacture, with firsthand observation possible at several (but not all) stages of its production.
23 “Hershey Plant Toured By Over 10 Million Visitors,” The M.S. Hershey Foundation Collection.
24 “The Story of Chocolate and Cocoa,” souvenir booklet, Hershey Chocolate Corporation, c. 1948-1960, author’s
personal collection; McMahon, Jr., Built on Chocolate, 70. The Community Building, the (now-10,000 capacity)
Sports Arena, the 150-room Cocoa Inn and Hotel Hershey, and Swimming Pool and Park Golf Club all received
attention to round out the booklet.

38
Inextricably tied to this didactic process, however, was the town itself, which the company viewed as an
extension of the factory. Visitors were provided with a commanding view of Hershey and its various
amenities from the fifth-floor landing during the factory tour, but the booklet’s design positioned “The
Community of Hershey” as the ultimate, utopian conclusion in “The Story of Chocolate and Cocoa.” This
story began “in the year 1519,” when “Hernando Cortez, the Spanish explorer and conqueror of Mexico,
learned from the Aztec Indians the secret of preparing a delicious new beverage.”25 Even if the
promotional booklet reveals the imperial dimensions of Hershey’s reliance on tropical plantations for its
supply, the story the company seeks to tell remains firmly focused on the town of Hershey. The town’s
image—that of its modern factory and its many amenities offered by its beneficent founder—formed the
bedrock of the company’s public relations efforts. The factory tour and the souvenirs visitors received
spearheaded these efforts. Education and boosterism operated in tandem to generate consumer
goodwill in early-twentieth-century industrial tourism.
The factory tour further reinforced an intimate connection to the town through the presence of
guides, many of whom were town locals. Given that these guides served as the public face of the entire
corporation, the “Instructions to Guides” in 1933 and 1940 urged them to “Be cheerful and look
cheerful. A pleasing personality is the first requisite for your position.”26 Helen Cappelli noted that the
company only started with two guides. She recalled taking as many as ten tour groups a day during her
tenure, which included walks from the first to fifth floor each time. Danae Strickler attended Hershey
Junior College but also worked part-time as a tour guide from 1954 to 1956. She recalled being able to
pick out “broken pieces of chocolate from a box” provided for the guides at the end of their tours.
Another guide, Eleanor Markley Mauck, averaged about six tours on a busy summer day in 1952. Mauck
25 “The Story of Chocolate and Cocoa,” souvenir booklet.
26 “Factory Guides: Instructions to factory tour guides,” 1933, Private Individual Collection; “Instructions to Guides,
Visitors Route List, Questions and Answers,” 1940, The M.S. Hershey Foundation Collection.

39
remembered that “it was never boring,” and that “we did not have to speak over the noise as large signs
posted above eye level enabled visitors to read about what they were seeing.” By midcentury, the
company was already instituting changes in the tour experience to handle growing crowds.27
An Intimate Experience Meets Growing Demand
Louis F. Santangelo, Hershey’s Tour Service Manager, noted that the company relied on the tour
guides to keep the crowds moving. “These girls do a wonderful job,” he said, “and a lot of the good
feeling people get when they tour the plant is due to them.” He noted that Hershey hires most of its
guides locally, and has “very definite specifications for the type of person we want to represent the
entire Hershey image to our visitors. We demand that guides be neat and cheerful at all times.” For the
summer months when crowds ballooned, the company hired from a long waiting list of applicants who
had attended at least one year of college and were daughters of employees. Verna Stoltz, the Tour
Service Department’s hostess, trained each guide, teaching them to answer standard visitors’ questions
and to be completely informed on both factory and town.28
The company touted its clean image, reinforced both by workplace upkeep and guides’
appearance and courteous demeanor. In reflecting on why Milton Hershey wanted to offer factory tours,
James T. Smith believed that “Mr. Hershey was always fascinated by machinery, and he thought people
would get a kick out of seeing the moulding and wrapping machines.” In addition to this interest,
Hershey was “proud of the cleanliness in the factory and wanted to make folks aware of it.”29 A 1967
employee memo reminded workers that “many of your departments are located along the regular tour
route and in clear view of the visitors.” The memo went on to stress that “the effort to keep the areas
27 Helen (Menicheschi) Cappelli interview, transcript, 16, Oral History Collection; “Tour Guide Reunion letters,”
1998, Accession 200821, Box 38, Folder 4, The M.S. Hershey Foundation Collection, HCA.
28 “The Hershey Factory – a smash hit with the American tour public,” The M.S. Hershey Foundation Collection.
29 Ibid.

40
clear and presentable projects a favorable image of our company to all who visit it,” noting that guest
remarks have shown they are “continually impressed with the cleanliness in all areas.” The memo
concluded, “Working as we do with consumer products, cleanliness as it related to all our manufacturing
and handling processes cannot be overemphasized.”30 Guests had no dress code, but were asked to not
smoke or take photos.31 Guides, however, were required to don sharp uniforms. Cappelli remembered
having to buy her own uniforms. She owned three, and usually used about two a week with a spare. “We
starched them and we washed them,” she recalled, “it was a job doing them up.”32 As the company’s
public face, guides appearance and demeanor required the utmost professionalism. Their presence also
added an air of familiarity and intimacy to a tour dominated by complex machinery.
Guests’ proximity to the production lines within the factory often enabled them to interact with
employees. Lena Foshetti, who worked in the Cocoa Packing Department, earned an affable reputation
by greeting, speaking with visitors, and answering their questions. “I can do my job with my eyes shut,”
she noted. Referring to the tourists who passed through her department, she said, “They’re just
wonderful.” Not only did brief conversations with employees such as Foshetti give the tour a more
personalized twist, but the presence of curious visitors also certainly helped alleviate much of the
monotony Foshetti and her fellow employees faced while working on repetitive tasks such as boxing cans
of cocoa. According to Ken Daniel, who worked in the New Wrapping Department, the most frequently
asked question visitors posed was, “What do you do with the broken bars?” Daniel would then briefly
explain reprocessing procedures.33 Guides also fondly remembered the personal nature of their jobs,
noting that visitors would often mail thank you cards for their tours. Cappelli recalled that one visitor
30 Memo to Management newsletter, May 9, 1967, Unit 232 Shelf 9.1A, Box 1, Folder 32, The Hershey Company
Employee Newsletters Collection, HCA.
31 “Plant tour information answers to questions,” undated, Accession 87006, Box 28, Folder 3, The Hershey
Company Collection, HCA.
32 “Hershey Plant Toured By Over 10 Million Visitors,” The M.S. Hershey Foundation Collection; Helen
(Menicheschi) Cappelli interview, transcript, 16, Oral History Collection.
33 Rupe, “A Point of Interest,” Don Papson Papers.

41
from Atlantic City even mailed her a five-pound box of salt-water taffy as a thank you. Danae Strickler
believed that factory workers enjoyed the various tour groups throughout the day. “I always got the idea
that seeing the tourists added additional pride to their job,” she said. “I thought it broke some of the
boredom of factory work for them.”34 Both Foshetti and Daniel certainly seemed to enjoy the steady flow
of guests passing through their workplaces and embraced conversation as a way to both enrich the
experience for visitors and help pass their time on task.
By the 1960s, the tour’s rising popularity began putting stress on the Tour Service Department’s
operations. Throughout the 1930s, the company averaged 49,479 guests annually. 1951 marked the first
time the annual total surpassed 100,000. In 1966, that total had ballooned to 597,069.35 Lou Santangelo
noted that the Tour Services Department, as a “principal function of the company’s public relations
program,” expanded considerably to include 26 employees by 1968. That year, the factory received
around three quarters of a million visitors, but two-thirds of these arrived in just July and August. The
Department ushered over 14,000 guests through the plant in a single day, with over a thousand people
taking the tour at one time. Santangelo and his department were continually exploring ways to create
additional space to ensure a smooth flow of guests, “but you can’t do this overnight,” he stated.
“Manufacturing has its own requirements and you can’t tear up a production line just so visitors can see
what you’re doing.”36
The Tour Services Department again modified the tour route in the early 1960s to accommodate
larger crowds. Verna Stoltz recalled that tours were stopped between the hours of 10:30 AM and 11:30
AM for employees to take lunch breaks. During this hour, the line began snaking through downtown
34 Helen (Menicheschi) Cappelli interview, transcript, 17, Oral History Collection; “Tour Guide Reunion letters,” The
M.S. Hershey Foundation Collection.
35 “Visitor Statistics – Hershey, PA Plant Tour,” Accession 200706, Box 1, Folder 15, Don Papson Papers, The
Hershey Company Collection, HCA.
36 “The Hershey Factory – a smash hit with the American tour public,” The M.S. Hershey Foundation Collection.

42
Hershey. When the doors reopened, guests were permitted to walk through the tour route without
guides to alleviate stoppages. The company roped off the route and painted yellow lines on the floor for
guests to follow. Tour guides were stationed at certain spots along the route and rotated every fifteen
minutes. As the lunch crowd dwindled, guides were able resume normal guided tours at fifteen-minute
intervals.37 Santangelo’s and Stoltz’s remarks give the impression that the visitors themselves were
becoming a part of the production process, being processed through the factory as efficiently as possible
given the record numbers arriving by the mid-1960s. This strain on space and resources began chipping
away at the personalized and intimate nature of the tours of earlier years.
Industry’s Image in the Early Twentieth Century
Hershey’s factory tour in its heyday exhibited many of the features characteristic of earlytwentieth-century industrial tourism. Hershey and other (mostly food) manufacturers that offered tours
of their manufacturing facilities exuded an aura of optimism and faith in production, both technologically
and socially. Hershey’s factory was a state-of-the-art facility when it opened, and quickly became the
largest chocolate plant in the world. An article in the Candy Industry and Confectioners Journal published
in 1963 touted many of the superlative qualities and quantities involved at Hershey’s plant. The article
noted the factory is “approximately 1,000 feet in an unbroken length of more than several blocks,” with a
“total factory floor area [amounting] to 2.5 million square feet.” The plant included offices “unique in
that they are windowless, air conditioned, scientifically lighted and insulated against the ingress of noise,
dust, drafts, and fire.” The company, the article continued, used about “1.2 million pounds of milk daily
(equivalent to that yielded by a herd of about 60,000 cows.”) Hershey stored cocoa beans “in 24 outside
silos of 90,000,000 pounds capacity,” carrying “upwards of 15 types and grades of cocoa beans.” Other
information provided by the company for tour groups in 1964 highlighted dramatic statistics. Hershey, for
37 “Hershey Plant Toured By Over 10 Million Visitors,” The M.S. Hershey Foundation Collection.

43
example, used “about one out of every eight cocoa beans grown in the world.”38 This style of
presentation, what Carolyn Kitch calls the “quantity narrative style,” is emblematic of industrial tourism.
Factory tours were (and continue to be) “filled with facts, especially numbers—measuring quantity, size,
weight, speed, cost—to convey the superlative dimensions of manufacturing, even if the products
themselves are quite small.”39 Such statistics sought to overwhelm visitors, providing the impression that
the sites before them stood on the vanguard of the modern, industrial world and therefore represented
beacons of technological progress.
Viewing production firsthand and watching complex machinery operate conveyed this message
in an instructive and edifying way. In the nineteenth century, Americans developed a taste for what Neil
Harris terms “the operational aesthetic,” an enduring fascination to peek behind the curtain to see how
things work. In his biography Humbug: The Art of P. T. Barnum, Harris describes the overall fascination
with hoaxing in nineteenth-century America, and cites Charles Dickens’s belief that contemporary
Americans were particularly suspicious and distrustful people because of the world of trickery around
them. Whether deception stemmed from a showman such as P.T. Barnum or a peddler advertising
medicine with remedies too good to be true, the atmosphere of distrust, Harris argues, derived from
Americans’ relationship with science and technology.
The constant innovation and invention of an industrializing and urbanizing society created an
atmosphere in which pseudoscientific explanation could pass as believable. “The coming of steam, of
railroads, of telegraphs,” Harris emphasizes, “indicated the futility of declaring anything impossible or
38 Alfred E. Leighton, “A CI&CJ first: closeup of giant Hershey plant,” Candy Industry and Confectioners Journal,
February 26, 1963, Accession 201421, Box 1, Folder 8, The Hershey Company Collection, HCA; “Information for
Tour Groups,” October 2, 1964, Accession 200715, SCB3, Folder 18, Private Individual Collection, HCA.
39 Carolyn Kitch, Pennsylvania in Public Memory: Reclaiming the Industrial Past (University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 2012), 112.

44
incredible.”40 Still, Harris believes most Americans were savvier than the historical record suggests, and
argues that people simply enjoyed the prospect of gathering information and solving a problem. He cites
several popular culture pursuits in the nineteenth century that support the notion that Americans
developed an “operational aesthetic.” How-to-do-it manuals, travel literature, almanacs, and episodic
detective stories published in newspapers provided an abundance of operational description.41 This
delight in problem solving and fascination with observing how things work carried through to the
burgeoning activity of touring factories, many of which displayed technological advances that seemed
far-fetched to the untrained eye. Food manufacturers such as Hershey or Heinz, which began offering
factory tours in the 1890s, held particular appeal as tourist destinations because Americans were
intimately familiar with their products.42 Touring Hershey and listening to the guides’ descriptions of how
each department operated was an educational experience not just because visitors enjoyed seeing how
the facilities worked, but also because the hundreds of intricate and complex machines all functioned to
produce Hershey bars and Hershey kisses—knowable commodities that were consumed in everyday life.
Industrial tourism in the United States emerged within the context of rapid urban-industrial
change in the late nineteenth century. Many harbored suspicions on where this new machine age would
take American civilization. Hershey entered this debate by showing the progressive possibilities of a wellcoordinated industrial plant and community—one so special that it would attract tourists. The founding
40 Neil Harris, Humbug: The Art of P. T. Barnum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 73. Harris further
remarks that one professor of chemistry in Philadelphia in 1839 declared daguerreotype a hoax, highlighting the
incredulity with which many handled new inventions.
41 Sea novels such as Herman Melville’s Moby Dick required readers to learn and master sailing vocabulary. In
addition to the “depiction of sailing and harpooning operations,” such novels offered “immense and erudite
discussions of anatomy, geology, and physiology” (76). Politically, Harris notes that Americans maintained a
fascination with conspiracy theories, and took great thrill as newspapers fed additional clues with each publication,
offering everyday readers a chance to formulate their own theories and render a verdict. The birth of the modern
detective story, from the likes of Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle, further provided intellectual exercises to
readers as they sought to discover the culprits along the way.
42 For a look the H. J. Heinz Company and its factory tour, see Robert C. Alberts, The Good Provider: H. J. Heinz and
His 57 Varieties (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973).

45
of Hershey heavily drew from the city beautiful and country life movements popular around the turn of
the century. As we have seen, a tour of Hershey’s factory exhibited pride not just in the machinery and
production process, but in the entirety of the town and the workers who inhabited it. Hershey presented
state of the art production facilities, but also a social utopia in which workers were provided with every
amenity needed to ensure reliable and efficient work. Building on Leo Marx’s work of literary criticism
The Machine in the Garden (1964), several scholars have explored the nineteenth-century dialectic
between nature and technology within the context of widespread industrialization.43
Many tourist sites, such as Niagara Falls, symbolized a harmony between nature and technology
that ran counter to the antagonistic relationship between the two that developed later in the twentieth
century. William Irwin, in The New Niagara: Tourism, Technology, and the Landscape of Niagara Falls,
1776-1917, demonstrates how turn-of-the-century investors, tourist boosters, and civic leaders
envisioned a “New Niagara” in which both natural and artificial, or scenic and industrial, could coexist in
harmony. Niagara’s industrial presence worked in sync with and relied on the generation of electricity
from the site’s natural wonder. Such harmonizing signaled an optimistic understanding that Niagara had
achieved the “optimum integration of nature and technology.”44 This optimization, many felt, extended
to the area’s workforce, such as that of the Natural Food Company’s Shredded Wheat Factory. Guides at
Hershey similarly extolled the virtues of the model town surrounding during its plant tours. If Hershey
had no sublime waterfalls from which to generate electricity, the miles and miles of surrounding dairy
farms nevertheless served as the rural foundation for Hershey’s manufacture of chocolate.
43 See, for example, John F. Sears, Sacred Places: American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth Century (Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1989). Sears reveals how nineteenth-century tourist sites functioned as
Americans’ sacred spaces, with tourism operating as a secular form of pilgrimage that helped Americans develop a
“distinct national image” that could rival Europe’s cultural prowess (4). The distinction was not exclusive, however,
as even the coal-mining company town of Mauch Chunk (present-day Jim Thorpe) embodied “an object of
admiration rather than dread” in nineteenth-century writings and scenic depictions in art (199).
44 William Irwin, The New Niagara: Tourism, Technology, and the Landscape of Niagara Falls, 1776-1917 (University
Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), xvii.

46
The asset Hershey most clearly sought to highlight on its tours was its factory’s cleanliness.
These tours offered tourists a peek behind the curtains of production but were deliberately crafted to
paint industry in a positive light. William Littmann, in “The Production of Goodwill: The Origins and
Development of the Factory Tour in America,” explores the many ways in which factory tours countered
negative press generated by muckraking journalists such as Upton Sinclair and photographers such as
Lewis Hine in the early twentieth century. Factory tours of the H. J. Heinz Company in Pittsburgh and the
National Cash Register Company in Dayton offered an “idealized and often comforting vision of factory
labor” to tourists.45 These tours, according to Littmann, “can best be understood as a rebuttal” to the
“dangerous and decrepit environment described by muckrakers.” Well-lit rooms and corridors,
architectural and aesthetic tactics such as Shredded Wheat’s “factory with a thousand windows” or
Hershey’s windowless, air-conditioned office building, and carefully selected tour routes, all suggested
45 William Littmann, “The Production of Goodwill: The Origins and Development of the Factory Tour in America,”
Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 9 (2003): 81. See also Alison C. Marsh, “The Ultimate Vacation: Watching
Other People Work, A History of Factory Tours in America, 1880-1950,” (PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University, 2008).
Figure 9 – Bar card showing a rural scene from Hershey’s surrounding countryside,
c. 1909-1918. Author’s personal collection.

47
transparent, clean, and hygienic environments in which companies treated their products (and their
workers) with care.46
The ability for guests to greet and pose questions to certain employees at Hershey while they
worked certainly strengthened visitors’ beliefs that these plants were indeed good places to work, but it
is important to remember that employees were incentivized to put their best foot forward. Both the
aforementioned “1940 Instructions to Guides” and the 1967 company memo reminded employees that
projecting a favorable image was of paramount importance as every tourist was a potential customer.
“Remember,” the 1967 memo noted, “visitors are not only our guests – but probably consumers. An
impression that our visitor gains in the plant or in the community may influence his future purchasing
habits.”47 Hershey employees, whether being monitored by supervisors or tourists, were under constant
pressure to maintain an efficient pace of work and a pleasant demeanor. If Hershey employees such as
Lena Foshetti and Ken Daniel enjoyed tourists because their presence reduced the monotony of their
work, this was not always the case at other factory tours.48 Putting labor on display alongside the
machines and the end products collectively enabled companies to have a say in reception of their public
image. Public relations efforts constituted the defining characteristic of industrial tourism in the early
twentieth century.
46 Ibid., 72, 75. Company leaders in Lowell were offering tours as a means of image management earlier in the
nineteenth century, but these visits were typically reserved for distinguished guests such as Davy Crockett and
Charles Dickens. See Kasson, Civilizing the Machine, 55-106.
47 Memo to Management newsletter, May 9, 1967, The Hershey Company Employee Newsletters Collection. The
ongoing presence of tourists in various parts of the plant further created a Foucauldian sense of constant
surveillance. This surveillance, Foucault writes, is “permanent in its effect, even if it is discontinuous in its action.”
See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 2nd ed., trans. Alan Sheridan (1977; New York:
Vintage Books, 1995), 201.
48 For an alternative view on the (less personal) interaction between tourists and workers during factory tours, see
Wendy Lynnette Michael, “Labor on Display: Ford Factory Tours and the Romance of Globalized
Deindustrialization” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2014), 125-126. As tourists walked along the Ford plant’s
famed 270-foot assembly line, the workers’ eyes “tended to focus on their work and there was little conversation
between them.” Michael suggests a much more impersonal experience between the workers and touring public
who watched them, perhaps due to the intense focus workers were required to exhibit while assembling cars.

48
The company famously behind the Reese’s Pieces product placement in Steven Spielberg’s E. T.
The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) had no national consumer advertising platform for the better part of the
twentieth century. Margot Opdycke Lamme and Lisa Mullikin Parcell write that, at a time when other
prominent food companies such as Campbell’s, Nabisco, and Gold Medal all “increasingly relied on
placing national consumer advertising in newspapers and magazines,” Hershey “did just the opposite,
eschewing paid-placement consumer advertising in favor of creatively promoting his utopian town of
Hershey, Pennsylvania, which, indirectly, promoted his chocolate products.”49 From the beginning, Milton
Hershey sought to attract people to his town, both as prospective employees and, eventually, as patrons
to the growing Hershey Park and surrounding amenities. He linked his products to their place of
production through promotional materials made in-house in the plant’s Printing Department. Such
materials included booklets such as “The Story of Chocolate and Cocoa,” as well as recipes and news
releases. By far the most ingenious method of tying the products to their place of production was the
use of bar cards.
Hershey first conceived of the idea to wrap promotional postcards within chocolate bars during
his time in Lancaster. Around 1900, he decided to include in each milk chocolate bar one of a series of 20
specially sized, decorative postcards advertising the company’s entire product line.50 After relocating and
49 Margot Opdycke Lamme and Lisa Mullikin Parcell, “Promoting Hershey: The Chocolate Bar, The Chocolate Town,
The Chocolate King,” Journalism History 38, no. 4 (Winter 2013): 199.
50 McMahon, Jr., Built on Chocolate, 41.
Figure 10 – Bar card showing a children’s playground and rustic bridge in town, c. 1909-1918. Author’s personal collection.

49
founding his model town in Derry Church, Hershey embraced this idea again, but instead of advertising
the products on collector cards, he used photographs depicting scenes of his town, factory, and park.
Lamme and Parcell note that, of the 62 bar cards remaining in the archives, “all but three of them
portrayed scenes from the town of Hershey.” Popular scenes depicted cows grazing on open farmland,
families picnicking in the park and playing in the pool, as well as numerous buildings throughout town.
Other cards featured employee apartments available at the Hershey Inn or interior views of the factory.51
Many of the rural scenes included the phrase “Made on the Farm” to emphasize the wholesome nature
of the ingredients with which Hershey products were made. Interior factory scenes displayed ordered
workplaces and rows of machines, suggesting hygienic and reliable production. The myriad scenes from
life in town highlighted the ample recreational opportunities available to prospective employees, visitors,
and consumers. Tying together the products and their place of production meant the company’s
commercial success relied on the town’s reputation as an industrial utopia, and vice versa. Quality
products, per Hershey’s logic, came from a quality place to live.
The bar cards thus enabled Hershey to promote the quality of his products and the viability of
his model town as a budding tourist destination. Most importantly, they provided consumers a material
object with which to further advertise the company nationwide by mail. Postcards held incredible appeal
in the early twentieth century, a fact Hershey certainly knew and embraced when deciding to insert
them within the wrapping of each five-cent bar produced. The company developed a total of 88 designs
over the years, printed first in black and white, then with a green tint, and finally printed in four colors.
The company used bar cards in their best-selling product from 1909 until 1918. One report stated that
over 75 million bar cards were printed for inclusion in chocolate bars over this duration.52 Lamme and
51 Lamme and Parcell, “Promoting Hershey,” 204; McMahon, Jr., Built on Chocolate, 102-103.
52 McMahon, Jr., Built on Chocolate, 102-103; “Wish You Were Here,” Hershey Community Archives website, June
22, 2009, accessed February 9, 2023, Wish You Were Here… – Hershey Community Archives (hersheyarchives.org).

50
Parcell point out that, because consumers could only access the cards after opening the chocolate bar,
they were “providing a personal endorsement… of both the product and the town when they mailed the
cards to friends or family.”53 These authors say very little about the factory tour as an additional form of
indirect advertising, but it was just that. Hershey’s factory tour embraced this type of word-of-mouth
advertising over paid, placed advertising used by other food processing companies. Inclusion of factory
scenes furthermore reminded postcard recipients that the building itself was open for tours and could be
included as part of a trip to town. “And so, knowingly or unknowingly,” one publication wrote as tour
visitation numbers reached a fever pitch in 1968, “the man who was supposed not to believe in
advertising created what was to become one of the greatest advertising and public relations vehicles in
the history of American business.”54
The Problems of Success and Expansion
Around midcentury, the candy and confectionary industry landscape was becoming more
crowded. A lack of competition was part of the reason Hershey was able to rely on point-of-sale
advertising and creative tie-ins between products and their place of production instead of a more robust
program of paid, placed advertising. This began to change by the 1960s, with half a dozen major
conglomerates moving into the market. Mars, Inc., which had previously bought most of its bulk
chocolate from Hershey, began making its own. In 1970, Hershey still ranked first in the industry, with
three of the country’s four top-selling products, but it responded to the growing competition in a
number of ways.55 The company opened two new plants in Smiths Falls, Ontario and Oakdale, California
53 Lamme and Parcell, “Promoting Hershey,” 204.
54 “The Hershey Factory – a smash hit with the American tour public,” The M.S. Hershey Foundation Collection.
55 “Hershey’s sweet tooth starts aching,” Business Week, February 7, 1970, Accession 201421, Box 1, Folder 8, The
Hershey Company Collection, HCA.

51
in 1963 and 1965, respectively. Many considered this a long overdue move. The addition of these two
facilities better enabled Hershey to meet national demand.56
Both the Ontario and California plants offered factory tours for visitors, with internal memos
documenting visitor attendance at these alongside that of their flagship plant. In 1968, 11,400 visitors
toured the factory in Smiths Falls, while Oakdale welcomed 58,298 guests just three years after
opening.57 While these numbers were far more modest than those in Hershey, which by the late 1960s
were bordering on a million guests annually, these tours signaled a corporate commitment to the factory
tour model. In 1972, the Smiths Falls plant received a “Hershey Foods” exhibit that had been exhibited in
the Niagara International Centre in Skylon Park for six years. The 1,136-foot exhibit featured models of
the plant, Hersheypark, Hotel Hershey, the stadium and arena, and other buildings, as well as a flow
chart illustrating the stages of chocolate production and a one-pot conche. Skylon officials reported that
over a million guests annually toured the area of the building where the exhibit was located at the base
of the 520-foot observation tower overlooking Niagara Falls. The exhibit needed relocated, however,
because Skylon was replacing its business and industrial displays with retail shops and entertainment
facilities.58 If Skylon’s decision foreshadowed things to come for postindustrial tourism at large, the
perseverance of the “Hershey Foods” exhibit is nevertheless striking. The relocated “Hershey Foods”
exhibit reveals that Hershey was still intent on highlighting not just its products and factory, but the town
in which the products were made, even as corporate decision-making was changing the nature of the
company.
56 Memo to Management newsletter, November 24, 1971, Unit 232 Shelf 9.1A, Box 1, Folder 36, The Hershey
Company Employee Newsletters Collection, HCA. The Oakdale plant, for instance, supplied the westernmost
thirteen states, including Alaska and Hawaii.
57 Memo to Management newsletter, January 24, 1969, Unit 232 Shelf 9.1A, Box 1, Folder 34, The Hershey
Company Employee Newsletters Collection, HCA.
58 Memo to Management newsletter, June 20, 1972, Unit 232 Shelf 9.1A, Box 1, Folder 37, The Hershey Company
Employee Newsletters Collection, HCA.

52
In addition to expanding their chocolate production facilities, Hershey also began diversifying
beyond “solid” chocolate. For many locals this felt “roughly akin to some of their Amish neighbors
tossing their hats in the air and buying a snappy sports car.”
59 In 1963, the company purchased for $15-
million in company stock the local H. B. Reese Candy Company. Hershey moved more firmly into the food
business in 1966 with acquisitions of San Giorgio Macaroni, Inc., of nearby Lebanon, Pennsylvania, and
Delmonico Foods, Inc., out of Louisville, Kentucky. The company acquired other businesses in the
ensuing years, including the Chicago-based Cory Corporation, which manufactured coffee-brewing and
food service equipment as well as household appliances. By 1968, the Hershey Chocolate Corporation
had become the Hershey Foods Corporation.60 Around this time, Hershey also solidified working
agreements with two foreign firms, Nacional de Dulces, S. A. de C. V., to manufacture and market
chocolate in Mexico beginning in 1969, and Rowntree Mackintosh Ltd. of York, England to manufacture
their products in the United States. In the 1970s, harvest countries such as Brazil, Ecuador, and Ivory
Coast began bolstering their industrial capacity to process cocoa beans into chocolate liquor on-site and
ship liquor rather than beans to Hershey. Although a far cry from another Central Hershey (1916-1946)—
the mill and town that Milton founded near Santa Cruz, Cuba—the company nevertheless played a role
in keeping more of the crop processing in its home countries, where labor was cheaper, before
shipment.61 In its diversification efforts, Hershey began strengthening its economic ties globally.
Perhaps the company’s most revolutionary change in the 1960s was its turn to its first mass
consumer advertising campaign. Company executives cited increased competition as one of the reasons,
but the acquisition of so many new brands certainly played a part as well. So, too, did an evolving retail
59 “Hershey Foods Corporation: A Brief History,” The Hershey Entertainment & Resorts Company Collection;
“Hershey’s sweet tooth starts aching,” The Hershey Company Collection.
60 Ibid.
61 Mike Lench, “Hershey’s new management team sets strategy for future,” Candy & Snack Industry (May 1976):
42, Accession 201421, Box 1, Folder 8, The Hershey Company Collection, HCA. This decision also stemmed from
issues with cocoa bean infestation during shipment.

53
landscape. With the postwar emergence of supermarkets that could carry and display exponentially
more products at once, “the competition for shelf space [had become] fierce.”62 Americans had
unprecedented access to chocolate and candy goods by midcentury, but several new conglomerates
quickly surfaced to challenge Hershey’s longstanding monopoly for these buyers. Executives began
discussing this change around 1968, launching a nationwide campaign in the United States in 1970.63
These changes in diversification and advertising tactics signaled a company beginning to look outward,
beyond the confines of its model town. What ramifications these changes held for the town of Hershey
itself would be monumental. In an era of rampant deindustrialization, Hershey did not abandon its roots
in central Pennsylvania. Far from it. The company doubled down on the promise of its model community,
investing new money in both its amusement park and, as we will see, its factory tour in quite the unique
way. The town, the park, and the factory tour underwent a fundamental restructuring in the early 1970s.
The factory tour by now had grown in popularity to uncontrollable proportions as millions flocked to the
small town in rural Pennsylvania.
Hershey by the 1970s had developed into a national tourist attraction. People came from all over
as “lines of people snaked through the city of Hershey for blocks as people waited to tour the candy
factory.”64 By 1966, the tour had attracted over half a million guests annually, and the numbers
continued ballooning through the late 1960s and early 1970s. Totals jumped to 899,465 and then
946,301 in 1970 and 1971.65 Much of the reason for this surge in visitation can be attributed to the
overall rise in postwar prosperity for many middle-class Americans, who now had cars and more
62 Memo to Management newsletter, June 21, 1969, Unit 232 Shelf 9.1A, Box 1, Folder 34, The Hershey Company
Employee Newsletters Collection, HCA. This memo stated that the average supermarket was able to “carry in
excess of 7,000 items – about 200 of which are candy items.”
63 “Hershey Foods Corporation: A Brief History,” The Hershey Entertainment & Resorts Company Collection;
“Hershey’s sweet tooth starts aching,” The Hershey Company Collection.
64 “Chocolate World 25th Anniversary,” A Special Supplement of the Lebanon Daily News, May 1998, Accession
201302, Box 1, Folder 4, Jeff Sommer Papers, The Hershey Company Collection, HCA.
65 “Visitor Statistics – Hershey, PA Plant Tour,” Don Papson Papers.

54
disposable income with which to travel. But the chocolate factory tour had become a popular fixture in
the media as well. In 1952, an episode of I Love Lucy titled “Job Switching” aired on CBS-TV. In it, Lucy
and Ethel find themselves working in a chocolate factory, where they confront the speed of line
production in a chocolate plant’s wrapping department by eating pieces and shoving the rest under their
caps and down their blouses. “Job Switching” would have been viewed by millions of Americans
throughout the 1950s and provided a chocolate-specific update to Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times
(1936), in which his iconic Tramp similarly faced the challenges of assembly-line production with comedic
wit and hopeless verve. In addition to educational films such as Hershey’s Crossroads of the World that
circulated through classrooms around midcentury, Roald Dahl’s novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
(1964) captivated children’s imaginations with questions of what such a fantastical location might
actually look like. Mel Stuart’s adaptation Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971), featuring Gene
Wilder as the titular chocolatier, offered one vision. For many Americans, however, touring Hershey’s
chocolate plant was still the closest experience to the allure and intrigue of these popular depictions
they could get.
Seeking to understand the tour’s rise in popularity, as well as determine solutions to handle
these increased crowds, Hershey assembled a Visitor Tour Task Team to investigate these matters. The
task team conducted a number of studies, which often included visitor feedback generated from mailed
surveys. The various surveys collectively reinforce the belief that Hershey offered an impressive and
respected factory tour, but also revealed that such high visitation rates had begun straining the
company’s facilities, both inside and outside the factory. One report from May 1970 revealed that most
guests first had the idea of visiting Hershey from word of mouth.66 Comments from this batch of surveys
66 “Visitors’ Tour Task Team – minutes from taped conference and survey responses,” May 4, 1970, Accession
200706, Box 2, Folder 3, Don Papson Papers, The Hershey Company Collection, HCA. Of those surveyed, 641
decided to visit Hershey after discussions with friends and relatives, while 142 had done so based on a previous
visit. 122 guests decided to make the trip based on vacation guide recommendations, while another 30 cited
billboards and 13 cited promotional films.

55
often focused on the plant’s cleanliness (“Spotless”) and confusion over the tour route (“Why is tour
backwards?”; “Tour doesn’t start from raw materials”). Several guests also expressed dismay at their
inability to converse with tour guides, who at this point were often relegated to using pointers to
highlight descriptive signage at each station. One guest stated the need for “more guides so we can ask
questions” while another asked for “more personnel in tour to explain to visitors what they are going to
see.” Additional remarks calling for “more parking” revealed infrastructural strains outside the factory.67
The task team compiled another batch of visitor feedback from questionnaires mailed to 3,064
families who took the plant tour in June, July, and August 1970. Findings were based on the return of
1,050 of these completed questionnaires. Again, feedback on the surface was overwhelmingly positive,
with fifty percent of responses rating the tour “excellent,” and another forty-one percent “good.”
Nevertheless, over “50% felt that there were too many people on the tour,” with the report stating that
“the comments which were offered focused on the need for smaller groups, a desire to see the
beginning of the production process, and a preference for a longer tour.”68 In one final batch of surveys
from 1970, frequent cited dislikes were the factory noise, the tour’s rushed pace, and the overall lack of
commentary.69 These surveys signaled the company’s dawning realization that its factory tour was
becoming untenable, particularly during the summer months. Visitor projections for the ensuing years
put totals well over a million guests annually, leaving executives (and those running the tours) to wonder
if their facilities had the capacity to handle such gargantuan numbers.70
67 Ibid.
68 “Plant Tour and Community Report, 1970, Accession 200706, Box 1, Folder 14, Don Papson Papers, The Hershey
Company Collection, HCA. Respondents to the questionnaire came from all fifty states, but fifty-six percent were
concentrated in just three: Pennsylvania (25%), New York (18%), and New Jersey (14%). Of those surveyed, three
quarters also visited the amusement park during their trip.
69 “Visitors’ Tour Task Team, meeting report,” May 6, 1970, Accession 200706, Box 2, Folder 3, Don Papson Papers,
The Hershey Company Collection, HCA.
70 “General Points of Visitor Flow, 5/5/70 and supplementary report by Visitors’ Tour Task Team,” May 20, 1970,
Accession 200706, Box 2, Folder 3, Don Papson Papers, The Hershey Company Collection, HCA.

56
The factory tour by the early 1970s faced constraints and logistical challenges on numerous
fronts. The biggest problem was “congestion both in and out of the Plant.” Almost every other issue
those running the factory tour faced stemmed from congestion: sanitation, safety, facility shortages, the
loss of sales after tours, and the overall disappearance of the intimate, personal nature of guided tours.
Lou Santangelo, head of the Tour Services Department, noted in 1970 that at one point they had sent as
many as 300 guests on a tour in one time just to empty the lobby, so more could enter.71 This scale not
only deprived guests of a more personalized experience, but created problems outside the plant. The
company gradually added parking lots on all sides of the factory. Vehicular and pedestrian traffic
nevertheless remained an issue facing the town, particularly near the factory and around Chocolate
Avenue as lines of visitors waiting to enter the factory tour snaked through downtown Hershey. The
company sought to alleviate afternoon traffic jams by redirecting visitors to the stadium parking area.72
Shuttles ferried busloads of guests to and from the factory for a time, but the company eventually
realized it needed a more permanent solution for the mounting traffic concerns.
71 J. H. Bott to Task Team, “Summary Report,” May 5, 1970, Accession 200706, Box 2, Folder 3, Don Papson Papers,
The Hershey Company Collection, HCA; “Visitors’ Tour Task Team – minutes from taped conference and survey
responses,” May 4, 1970, Don Papson Papers.
72 Houts and Whitenack, Hershey, 102; 8.54.
Figures 11 and 12 – On the left, an image of guests in line under a covered entrance to the factory’s visitor lobby and start of factory tour, c.
1960-1967. On the right, more guests arrive on Chocolate Avenue for the tour, c. 1964-1967. The righthand photo shows Kiss streetlights
installed in 1963. Photos courtesy of the Hershey Community Archives.

57
Hershey Estates and the Hershey Foods Corporation co-financed and constructed a monorail to
ease downtown congestion in 1969. The park benefited from a new attraction that provided a bird’s eye
view of its grounds and the zoo, while the chocolate company finally had an answer to its problem of
downtown visitor congestion. The Monorail Amusement Company designed a ride system similar to that
used for Expo ’67 in Montreal, Canada, with three electric trains ferrying up to 162 people at a time
between two stations. The first station was located at the Sports Arena, where guests were already
encouraged to park, while the second dropped off visitors near the factory at Chocolate Avenue. The
monorail fit within the company’s longstanding belief that the image of its town, park, and factory all
reinforced one another. The track height varied from twelve to twenty-five feet, depending on the
contour of the ground, giving passengers a commanding view of surrounding facilities, town, and
countryside.73 A memo from September 1970 noted that more than 1,325,000 passengers had traveled
on Hershey’s Monorail since its first 1970 run on March 27.74 The monorail helped to alleviate some of
the downtown congestion, and demonstrated a burgeoning commitment to improving the park
amenities, but it did not solve the issues inside the factory.
A Victim of its Own Success
By 1970, management of the thousands of visitors in the factory at any given time bordered on
controlled chaos. Santangelo, who anticipated as many as 16,000 people daily during the summer
months of that year, felt that “we are handling this by almost ‘herding’ the people through” the plant.
The Tour Services Department employed a hostess and eight guides, but brought on numerous part-time
guides to help usher along the hundreds of guests walking through the plant at any one time.75 Guests
73 Memo to Management newsletter, January 24, 1969, The Hershey Company Employee Newsletters Collection.
74 Memo to Management newsletter, September 18, 1970, Unit 232 Shelf 9.1A, Box 1, Folder 35, The Hershey
Company Employee Newsletters Collection, HCA. The company provided guests with a free ticket inside their
souvenir visitor packet, which roughly 525,000 people used.
75 “Visitors’ Tour Task Team – minutes from taped conference and survey responses,” May 4, 1970, Don Papson
Papers. Santangelo estimated that this mass of people ran between 800 and 1,000 at any given time.

58
walked four or five abreast through corridors, often causing jam-ups in the narrower passageways and
intersections. Some guests felt claustrophobic from the cramped and hot spaces and exited the tour
from a side entrance. Santangelo tracked the numerous questionnaires and surveys he distributed to
guests, noting increased frustration that visitors felt they were being rushed and not given enough
personal attention by the guides. Noise from the production lines and crowds further prevented any sort
of dialogue between guides and guests.
Internal documentation from these crisis years reveals a panoply of memos attempting to
decipher how best to control the crowds in a safe and efficient manner. These memos reveal nothing
short of a logistical, minute-by-minute nightmare. In August 1962, the factory tour shifted to continuous
operation throughout the day, meaning guided tours had to grapple with shift changes and lunch breaks
for the first time that summer.76 Much of the congestion within the factory in the ensuing decade
stemmed from these competing movements of people within narrow corridors. The Tour Services
Department even began modifying the physical layout of the plant to accommodate increased guests. At
one point, Santangelo directed workers to break through a wall on the upper level of the retail counter in
the visitor lobby, creating a separate pathway for visitors to exit the tour. The company also moved the
time clocks where employees clocked in and out of their shifts to locations further removed from the
tour route.77 Beforehand, major backups would occur as employees clocked out and left the building,
using the same corridors through which hundreds of guests were passing.
Logistics for handling these large groups during employee lunchbreaks were planned down to
the minute. “It will be necessary,” one memo noted, “that all girls synchronize their watches with IBM
employees’ check-out clocks in the first cooling tunnel room so that at 10:28 the guide on duty at the
76 J. E. Council to Verna Stoltz, “Continuous Tours – Visitors Department,” August 2, 1962, Accession 87006, Box 23,
Folder 5, The Hershey Company Collection, HCA.
77 “Visitors’ Tour Task Team – minutes from taped conference and survey responses,” May 4, 1970, Don Papson
Papers.

59
Baking Chocolate Line will prevent visitors from entering the tunnel for two or three minutes, giving the
employees who do check out for lunch a chance to get to the time clocks.” Guides were encouraged to
remind visitors that “this is during factory lunch hour; production is limited; kindly visualize all machines
in operation; these employees began work at 6:00 A.M.” This logistical reorientation transformed not
just the tours, but the routines of workers, who now had to modify their production lines and alternate
lunch breaks so that some machines were still in operation for guests to see during the lunch hour.
Instructions for each department varied, were confusing, and were dictated down the minute:
“#35 Automatic Line (Milk) – Suggest shutting down #34 line from 10:30 to 11:00 during which
time these 10 girls will take lunch. At 11:00 machine counters will be read on line #35 and the 10
girls plus 3 extra girls (relief on hand wrapping) will relieve the 13 girls on line #35 for lunch. Line
#34 girls will be credited with the piece work for the 7½ operative hours on line #34 plus the
production of the half hour relief on line #35. Also required during this period, will be one man
to catch off the boxes conveyed to 41 bldg. from line #35. This is necessary since there is
absolutely no space available for the girls to skid boxes along the visitors aisle at line #35.”78
In addition to the casual conversations employees such as Lena Foshetti and Ken Daniel shared with
guests, accommodating tourists from a temporal perspective had become an integral part of working at
the Hershey plant. Modified schedules within one department, moreover, required coordination and
conformity with other departments reliant on delivery or receipt of the chocolate from their respective
stages of manufacture. Unbelievably, the visitor experience in many ways dictated the flow of
production. The company was not necessarily losing productivity, but its willingness to modify its work
schedules to accommodate tourists reinforces the importance it attributed to its factory tour.
If Hershey remained committed in the 1960s and 1970s to accommodating growing crowds,
more stringent health and sanitation regulations began to shift the foundation on which its factory tour
operated. A report from the Food and Drug Administration Plant Evaluator posed several questions
78 “Instructions, Comments on Proposal to Operate Along Visitors Route During Lunch Period,” August 10, 1962,
Accession 87006, Box 23, Folder 5, The Hershey Company Collection, HCA.

60
related to the handling and production of standardized chocolate products, including questions such as,
“Is the plant so designed and the equipment arranged to preclude cross-contamination of in-process
products?” and, “Is traffic within the plant restricted and controlled to prevent unnecessary cross-traffic
between raw material and processing areas?” Hershey’s factory tour did not provide access to the earlier
stages of production which included raw material handling, but the stages it did show, and the “intimate
contact with the employees and with the product,” called into question whether the company would be
able to reconcile its large crowds with FDA regulations.79 Unlike employees, tourists had no dress code,
and their close contact with the products signaled real concerns. In most places, railings were all that
separated guests from the machines. Many felt that only by cordoning off the tour route with glass
partitions could the tour survive from a sanitation standard.80
This close contact with the product presented other problems related to temperature, safety,
and competition. It proved increasingly difficult to temper the liquid chocolate in the molding areas to
the precise degrees needed with the high volume of incoming visitors. Especially in summertime, the
numbers of guests breathing and perspiring within each department contributed to fluctuations in
temperature and humidity levels which posed challenges to production.81 So many guests in cramped
spaces with operative machines also presented safety concerns. The rogue visitor fiddling with a
machine was a concern, but more pervasive were the fears of what to do in the event of a fire, a power
outage, or an ammonia leak, which coincidentally did occur in 1976 and 1982.82 Rerouting or expanding
79 “Rules and Regulations – Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Health,” Accession 87006, Box 2,
Folder 3, Don Papson Papers, The Hershey Company Collection, HCA; Earl J. Spangler, interview by Richmond D.
Williams, December 12, 1989, 89OH30, transcript, 31-32, Oral History Collection, HCA.
80 Bott to Task Team, “Summary Report,” Don Papson Papers; Robert H. Schock, interview by Richmond D.
Williams, December 13, 1990, 90OH30, transcript, 19-20, Oral History Collection, HCA. The company had added
glass walls to the newer plants in Smiths Falls and Oakdale.
81 Robert H. Schock interview, transcript, 19, Oral History Collection; Earl J. Spangler interview, transcript, 31-32,
Oral History Collection.
82 “Visitors’ Tour Task Team – minutes from taped conference and survey responses,” May 4, 1970, Don Papson
Papers; L. F. Santangelo to Hershey executives, “Subject: Plant Visitors Program,” May 5, 1970, Accession 200706,

61
the tour route was a constant suggestion for how to deal with the growing crowds, but the question of
industry competition hindered these efforts. Even though many felt more of the manufacturing process
should be shown from an educational perspective, the fear of revealing trade secrets—particularly in the
earlier stages of production with milk condensing and nut roasting—kept visitors focused on the later
stages.83
Finally, the tour amenities within the factory had grown woefully short of the mark with close to
a million guests arriving per year. There were not enough restroom facilities during peak periods, and
there was no place to eat, drink, or relax immediately after the tour. Even sales at the retail counter
within the visitor lobby suffered, with guest refusing to wait in long lines to purchase their chocolate.
Plant tour expenses in 1970 totaled $346,600. Although retail counter sales were not the driving force
for the tour, they did help offset these costs.84 After years of study, the Visitor Tour Task Team concluded
that the only way to maintain the factory tour would be through fully enclosing the tour route in glass
with a separate air system. Cost estimates to construct an enclosure six feet wide for the length of the
route, to air-condition this space, and to reroute the most congested areas and establish emergency exit
routes, would cost between $650,000 and $675,000.85 The task team thus concluded that building a
Box 2, Folder 3, Don Papson Papers, The Hershey Company Collection, HCA. Employees had strict training on what
to do, and guides were instructed on how to manage these situations, but concerns nevertheless persisted.
83 Robert H. Schock interview, transcript, 36, Oral History Collection; Santangelo to Hershey executives, “Subject:
Plant Visitors Program,” Don Papson Papers. Tours at the Reese facility were discontinued altogether for fear of
disclosing trade secrets. These sources reiterate the (perhaps) surprising notion that production loss was never
considered a driving force in calls for change. Despite the presence of thousands of tourists each day, executives
felt confident their employees were producing chocolate in as efficient a manner as possible.
84 “Visitors’ Tour Task Team – minutes from taped conference and survey responses,” May 4, 1970, Don Papson
Papers; L. F. Santangelo to R. A. Zimmerman, “The Present and Future of the Plant Visitors Program,” August 4,
1969, Accession 200706, Box 2, Folder 1, Don Papson Papers, The Hershey Company Collection, HCA; “Plant Tour
Expenses – 1970,” Accession 200706, Box 1, Folder 13, Don Papson Papers, The Hershey Company Collection, HCA.
85 Santangelo to Zimmerman, “The Present and Future of the Plant Visitors Program,” Don Papson Papers. These
estimates did not include updating sound systems, equipment, or facilities inside or outside the plant, such as
much-needed restrooms.

62
separate visitor’s center with an as-yet unidentified factory tour experience was the most suitable
option.
Hershey’s factory tour certainly had its moment to shine, but crowds had grown too large by the
1970s. Tours had consequently become rushed, impersonal, and fragmented, leaving visitors with a
series of isolated views into the making of chocolate that greatly raised the aforesaid red flags. The tour’s
intimate nature—the ability for guests to speak with employees and see chocolate made from a few feet
away—were what made it such an enduring staple in the nation’s industrial tourist landscape for much
of the twentieth century. But crowds had increased to the point where this intimacy had become
untenable from a logistical standpoint, and questionable with regards to safety and sanitation. Another
issue existed as well: the inability for the company to tell what it viewed as the complete story of
chocolate. Trade secrets and sanitation concerns prevented guests from seeing the early stages of
manufacture, relegating these processes to lobby displays, souvenir booklets, and educational films.
“Today people are interested in the whole aspect,” wrote one executive. “If you can view a landing on
the moon from the control room, why can’t you see chocolate being made from the raw material. This is
where the golden nugget lies.”86 A new tour facility would be able to accommodate larger crowds, but
also potentially encapsulate a fuller story of chocolate production. It is from these constraints and
challenges that we begin to see the logic underpinning construction of a new corporate visitor center
removed entirely from the site of production.
Hershey had also successfully transferred its fuller story of chocolate production to screen. The
proliferation of educational and documentary films around midcentury, most often shown in schools,
revealed demand for a more complete picture of chocolate manufacture. The transfer of this story from
in-person tours to film and television also gave the company a logical reason to end public access to its
86 Bott to Task Team, “Summary Report,” Don Papson Papers.

63
factory. There were other ways to tell this story, many in more controlled fashion than the unwieldy tour.
Just as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory took viewers on a journey into an imaginative workspace,
educational films brought viewers into factories such as Hershey’s.
Films such as Chocolate Crossroads of the World, which Hershey’s Chocolate & Confectionary
Division released in 1965, brought the plant tour into American schools and American homes through
their televisions. The 27-minute film displayed popular scenes from the factory tour, such as the
conching and wrapping departments, but its first half showed a group of international students (brought
from cocoa bean harvest countries) touring the visitor’s lobby and its wall displays. Scenes of pod
harvesting with child labor then transition to scenes of Hershey, where many of the amenities and
attractions the modern town offers are put on display. The film surprisingly (and shamelessly) reveals the
colonial roots of the chocolate industry and its reliance on exploitative labor conditions. Nevertheless, it
achieves something the factory tour could not—a more complete picture of chocolate production and its
ties to a global marketplace. Circulation of the film began in January 1965. Within a few years, millions
had viewed it, with hundreds of prints in general distribution. Most bookings went to schools, but many
churches, men’s groups, women’s clubs, manufacturing plants, and resorts also requested copies.87 The
transmission of the factory tour to screen continued into the twenty-first century, with television shows
such as Unwrapped and How It’s Made filling a void left behind by the end of public access to many sites
of production. Hershey served as a production location for Unwrapped and featured prominently in one
of the show’s first episodes, aired in 2001.88
87 Memo to Management newsletter, January 24, 1969, The Hershey Company Employee Newsletters Collection;
Memo to Management newsletter, January 24, 1972, Unit 232 Shelf 9.1A, Box 1, Folder 37, The Hershey Company
Employee Newsletters Collection, HCA. The 1972 memo stated that, since 1965, Chocolate Crossroads of the World
had been booked 53,793 times for 103,917 showings to a total audience of 4,992,574. Since its 1965 release, the
film had also been used in 644 telecasts to an estimated 22,072,500 viewers. Great American Chocolate Factory
was a similar educational film produced in the late 1970s.
88 “S01E09: Chocolate Candy Unwrapped.” TVDB. N.d., accessed July 31, 2024, Unwrapped - TheTVDB.com.

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Even if Hershey’s reliance on a tropical supply chain of cocoa beans was present from the start,
its marketing was decidedly regional for much of its history. This began to change in the late 1960s and
1970s, as Hershey decided it was time for a national advertising campaign to match its national
distribution. In the ensuing decades, these efforts would turn global. Sharon Zukin, in Landscapes of
Power: From Detroit to Disney World, writes that the increased mobility of capital in the 1970s and 1980s
generated significant social change for local communities. “As markets have been globalized,” she argues,
“place has been diminished.” In other words, “capital moves, the community doesn’t.”89 For much of its
history, Hershey’s factory tour remained enmeshed within the rubric of a company town that viewed its
factory, town, and park as one interrelated utopian enterprise. Images of this model town proved
effective in public relations and advertising efforts for much of the twentieth century. Hershey would
remain financially committed to its founder’s town in the ensuing decades, but cracks were beginning to
appear in the economic logic rooting it solely to central Pennsylvania. As the company gradually entered
an increasingly globalized market, shifts in its corporate image moved away from the town and towards
its branding. Hershey ended its factory tour in 1973, the same year it opened an original and innovative
tourist attraction to replace it. The new site would continue to forge links to the town and surrounding
community in ways wholly unique from its factory tour predecessor, but subtle shifts redirected
attention to a broader audience. Just as Hershey’s advertising efforts expanded nationally in the early
1970s, so too did its tourist endeavors take on global proportions.
89 Sharon Zukin, Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991),
12, 15.

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Chapter 2: The Sentinels of Spindletop: Heritage and the Historicization of the Oil Industry
On the morning of January 10, 1901, Captain Anthony F. Lucas, an oil explorer, heard an
explosion. The sound reverberated through the town of Beaumont, Texas, sending the horses into a
frenzy. Lucas raced towards the scene, a quiet cow pasture four miles south of town. On the horizon,
near Spindletop Hill where his men were drilling, he could make out a black fountain blotting the sky. His
crew had struck gold. As he made his way there, a spectacle of chaos unfolded. Initially, a stratum of
mud had erupted with such violence that its force shattered the top of the derrick and catapulted rocks
and iron piping “hundreds of feet in the air” while an “avalanche of black slime cascaded down the hill.”
A steady stream of oil, with its greenish hue, burst forth spewing 120 feet in the air at the rate of
100,000 barrels a day. The gusher would continue uncontrolled for nine days.1 This event would quickly
become immortalized by photographer Frank Trost of Port Arthur. Trost captured what has now become
an iconic view of the Lucas Gusher and the maze of derricks that soon followed.2
1
James R. Chiles, “Spindletop: How a 150-foot gusher in a Texas cow pasture blew the petroleum industry into the
twentieth century,” Invention & Technology (Summer 1987): 35-38, Spindletop Misc. Articles, Texas Energy
Museum (hereafter TEM).
2 Margaret Downing, “Trost: Spindletop photographer,” Beaumont Sunday Enterprise-Journal, April 27, 1975,
Accession 2004.043, Box 27, Folder 6, Gwendolyn Wingate Papers, Tyrrell Historical Library [hereafter THL].
Figures 13 and 14 – On the left, the photograph by Frank Trost of the Lucas Gusher at Spindletop Hill, south of Beaumont
Texas, January 10, 1901. On the right, a photograph of Boiler Avenue, Spindletop, c. 1903. Photos courtesy of Frank Trost and
Spindletop/Gladys City Boomtown Museum.

66
“The volume of oil seems if anything to be on the increase,” said one Galveston banker, with the
gusher reaching 150 feet in height by the fifth day. A greasy mist of oil traveled north with the wind,
tinting houses yellow. Oil poured off the hill and filled in the pasture’s surrounding contours, creating
lakes up to 20 feet deep. Captain Lucas assembled guards to keep watch over the sea of oil and keep
curious onlookers at a safe distance. By the time his team successfully capped the gusher 800,000 barrels
later, Beaumont’s population had swelled in size. Several ramshackle boomtowns, including one named
Gladys City, cropped up amidst the frenzy and brown, sulfurous lakes.3 The sudden influx of tens of
thousands of people left the small town’s accommodations overwhelmed and underequipped. Shortages
in drinking water, lodging, jails, and cash created a shantytown atmosphere rife with drunkenness,
prostitution, and crime while bugs, roaches, and frogs made their homes within the clapboard hovels.
The threat of fire and rot loomed large.4
The frenzy was inescapable. Speculators divided and subdivided leases as small as 1/64 of an
acre. These “doormats” left just enough room for a derrick, with wildcatters drilling up to four wells
beneath a single derrick floor. Derricks sat so close together that workers erected plank runways
between them for quick evacuation in case of fire. By the end of 1902, men had drilled 242 wells in the
area, with more to come.5 Over 600 oil companies had been chartered, with a few—the Texas Company
(Texaco), Guffey Petroleum Company (Gulf), Magnolia Petrolia Company (Mobil), and Sun Oil Company—
quickly establishing a foothold that would end Standard Oil Company’s previous monopoly.6
In 1901
alone, Spindletop produced 3.6 million barrels of oil, with an estimated 10 million barrels lost to
evaporation, seepage, and fires. In 1902, the total produced reached 17.4 million barrels, rendering it
3 Chiles, “Spindletop,” 35-38.
4 William Clifford, “Beaumont’s Boomtown,” “Check the Oil!”, Vol. 14, no. 3 (November 1994), Accession 1995.020,
Box 13, Folder 1, Charlene Kiker Papers, THL; “Spindletop Connection,” January 19, 2001, Lamar University Public
Relations Campaign for Spindletop 2001 Centennial Celebration [Book Two of Two], TEM.
5
“Spindletop Connection.”
6 Clifford, “Beaumont’s Boomtown.”

67
the country’s third-largest oil field. The Lucas Gusher alone produced “as much oil as the 37,000 wells on
America’s east coast, six times as much as California, and twice as much as Pennsylvania, the leading oil
state.”7
Spindletop put Southeast Texas on the map and established Houston as the oil capital of the
world.
The scenes of oil blotting out the sky and rowdy boomtowns described above, although limited
to a brief but pivotal moment at the dawn of the twentieth century, represent the quintessential
manifestation of “boom.” This would emerge as the dominant image of the oil industry by century’s end.
In 1976, to celebrate the nation’s Bicentennial and the 75th anniversary of the Lucas Gusher, civic leaders
in Beaumont established the Gladys City Boomtown Museum, a replica of the site replete with several
wooden derricks. The original area had become inaccessible due to subsidence after decades of
extraction. Texans’ memorialization of their boomtown legacy unfolded two miles away on more stable
ground, but amidst a nation fractured by events both at home and abroad. Images of the Lucas Gusher
harkened back to a time when many Americans could visually see their wealth and prosperity skyrocket.
This particular manifestation of “boom” countered the cultural malaise afflicting much of America in the
1970s.
Integral to this boomtown image was that of the derrick, which had emerged as an icon of oil
extraction through Hollywood depictions and use in popular culture by the late twentieth century. This
chapter specifically unpacks the role the entertainment industry played in dramatizing this symbol,
which serves as the thematic focal point for the image of industry in Beaumont, and Texas at large. This
chapter therefore brings together public history and memorialization efforts in 1970s Beaumont and the
iconicity of the wooden derrick to reveal how heritage tourism and popular culture have codified a turnof-the-century image of the oil industry. This historicization, perhaps unintentionally, has rendered the
7
“Gladys City Spindletop Boomtown,” brochure, c. 1976, Box 1, Lucas Gusher Monument Association, TEM; Chiles,
“Spindletop,” 40.

68
industry an ostensible relic of the past while active extraction continues unabated, much of it offshore
and out of sight.
Early Memorialization Efforts
Visitation to Spindletop began almost immediately. An article published on the fourth day of the
gusher noted, “Great crowds of people visited the spouter on Sunday.” The article went on to state that a
“sea of curious humanity” made the trek to view the spectacle. The Southern Pacific ran special
excursion trains to the site for thousands of visitors and prospectors, with each train “crowded to the
guard rails.”8 A spark from a passing train set the western end of an oil lake afire. The fire raged for
several days, itself a scene that enticed hundreds to walk five miles from Beaumont to view.9 Throngs of
curious tourists amplified Spindletop’s chaotic atmosphere. The first permanent memorialization effort
for Spindletop took place in 1941, when the Lucas Gusher Monument Association—chartered by the
State of Texas on July 26, 1940—erected a 58-foot granite obelisk atop the site. Spindletop had ceased
productivity around 1936. In the 40 years following the eruption, the gusher’s specific location had been
lost. Local oil man Scott Myers, however, found it by locating the sunken timbers and remains of the
protruding drill pipe still in place underground. The group dedicated the monument on October 9, 1941
during the Texas Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association in Beaumont.10 The obelisk stood watch over
numerous nearby derricks which continued to extract oil from the surrounding pastureland in the
ensuing years.
8
“The Beaumont Oil Well – Great crowds of people visited the spouter on Sunday,” Houston Daily Post, January 14,
1901, Spindletop Misc. Articles, TEM.
9 Ralph Ramos, “Oil is well in Beaumont,” Beaumont Sunday Enterprise-Journal, April 27, 1975, Accession 2004.043,
Box 27, Folder 6, Gwendolyn Wingate Papers, THL.
10 “A Brief Summary of the Lucas Gusher Monument Association, The Spindletop Museum, The Texas Energy
Museum, and the Beaumont Rotary Club,” 1988, Box 1, Lucas Gusher Monument Association, TEM; “Spindletop
1901-1951, 50th Anniversary Program,” brochure, Box 1, Spindletop 50th Anniversary, TEM; Judith Walker Linsley,
Ellen Walker Rienstra, and Jo Ann Stiles, Giant Under the Hill: A History of the Spindletop Oil Discovery at
Beaumont, Texas in 1901 (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 2002), 215.

69
A more ambitious celebration unfolded in 1951 to mark Spindletop’s fiftieth anniversary. The
city’s week-long series of events included parades, barbecues, addresses, musical dramatizations,
network radio broadcasts, and other ceremonies. The planners employed a “Then and Now” theme,
which best surfaced in the display of two derricks, one old and one new, in downtown Beaumont’s
Sunset Park.11 Several hundred spectators attended the dedication ceremony of the 1901 replica drilling
rig and its modern counterpart on Saturday, January 6. In his “Dedication Remarks,” John W. Newton
spoke of the tremendous progress he felt the oil industry had made in the fifty years since Spindletop,
stating, “A glance at the two derricks here in Sunset Park makes clear the advantage we enjoy from the
standpoints of strength and efficiency in drilling equipment. What a tremendous difference there is!”
Following the remarks, a drilling crew started the engines on the modern rig and began their public
demonstration, spudding in a 5,000-foot well. Both rigs remained in Sunset Park for several months. Each
evening, neon lights illuminated the derricks and Fuller’s Café across the street stayed open late to
accommodate visitors.12 Derricks thus played a role in Beaumont’s earliest memorialization efforts,
11 “Spindletop 1901-1951, 50th Anniversary Program,” brochure.
12 Spencer W. Robinson, ed., Spindletop: Where Oil Became an Industry, 1901-1951, Official Proceedings of the
Spindletop 50th Anniversary Commission (1951), 133, 171; D. Ryan Smith, “Spindletop’s 50th Anniversary
Celebration,” Texas Gulf Historical & Biographical Record, Vol. 32 (November 1996): 67.
Figures 15 and 16 – On the left, a view of the dedication of the Lucas Gusher Monument on October 9, 1941. Active derricks
can be seen in the background. On the right, a view of two derricks, one a wooden replica, the other a modern steel rig in
downtown Beaumont’s Sunset Park. Both rigs were erected for Spindletop’s Fiftieth Anniversary Celebrations, c. 1951.
Photos courtesy of Tyrrell Historical Library and Texas Energy Museum.

70
either as active backdrops to a commemorative obelisk or as centerpieces showcasing technological
advances made in the preceding fifty years.
Through the next two decades, issues with the granite obelisk’s placement in the middle of an
active site of production would catalyze local civic leaders into planning a more elaborate form of
memorialization. Texas Gulf Sulphur Company began extracting sulfur from the ground in 1952-1953 on
the Spindletop salt dome. By 1955, the monument had begun to sink. The sulfur extraction left the earth
surrounding the obelisk prone to subsidence, creating deep pockets that eventually filled with water.
Local officials feared that the monument, now partially submerged, would topple. In 1955, officials
arranged for the monument to be moved to higher ground on Sulphur Drive, a mile away from the
original site.13 The South Park Rotary Club established a committee in the early 1960s to spruce up the
new site and add a number of historic and replica features, culminating in an Outdoor Oilfield Museum.
By 1966, original 1901 wooden oil storage tanks, a well pumper, a replica wooden derrick, and other
relics complemented the granite obelisk commemorating the Lucas Gusher. In 1967, the United States
Department of Interior designated the site a National Historic Landmark.14
Despite this designation, the monument and its accompanying relics stood on Sulphur Drive in a
state of decline by the early 1970s. Bob Parkin said of the “unimpressive display” in a 1972 editorial, “As
it stands today, the landmark could hardly be an acceptable tribute to the event that changed the life of
mankind throughout the world.” Rot had set in and much of the equipment was scaled with rust. Several
13 “Response to the Museum Questionnaire of the Natural Resources Subcommittee of the Joint Advisory
Committee on Governmental Operations, by the Spindletop Museum of Lamar University,” Box 1, Lucas Gusher
Monument Association, TEM; Richard Stewart, “So how do you move a monument?” Beaumont Sunday EnterpriseJournal, September 19, 1976, Box 7M1, Folder 2, Spindletop Museum Papers, Lamar University Archives and
Special Collections [hereafter LUASC].
14 National Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings, “Lucas Gusher, Spindletop Oil Field, Texas,” October 13, 1966,
Box 1, Lucas Gusher Monument Association, TEM; “Spindletop Monument,” brochure, c. 1966, Box 1, Lucas Gusher
Monument Association, TEM; “Lucas Gusher Monument Due U.S. Historical Marker,” Houston Post, May 1967, Box
1, Lucas Gusher Monument Association, TEM.

71
of the original structures were “crumbling from exposure and termites.” According to Parvin, the
National Historic Landmark designation, and the site’s placement on “nearly every travel map available”
meant little if “the only local directions to the site are two small signs set beyond the view of most
motorists on Cardinal Drive and Port Arthur Road.”15 What Beaumont needed, Parvin felt, was a proper
and well-maintained tourist attraction commemorating Texas’s entry onto the stage of global oil
production in 1901. Grand designs for such an attraction, however, were already underway by this time.
In a meeting at the Beaumont Rotary Club on January 13, 1965, James A. Clark of Houston
proposed the creation of an amusement park “which would rival Disneyland” and include a replica of the
Gladys City boomtown and the Lucas Gusher. Seeking to ride the wave of theme parks’ surging
popularity throughout the United States, the Rotary Club authorized a feasibility study and contracted
Belden Associates of Dallas to conduct it.16 The feasibility study, submitted in October 1965, laid out
plans for an “amusement park at the site of the birthplace of Texas oil.” It suggested, “Such a facility,
patterned after Disneyland and Six Flags Over Texas, would use the excitement of the oil field and
boomtown as the theme, while performing educationally for the petroleum industry.” To succeed,
however, the “Spindletop park must emphasize entertainment, not education.”17 Belden Associates’
study elaborated on how exactly its proposed park might strike a balance between education and
entertainment through use of an industrial theme.
From the onset, the study established that “consideration has been given only to a theme park
based on the oil industry rather than a carnival-type park with no central theme.” The study noted that
“the excitement of the oil field and boom town offers the potential for an outstanding amusement park.
15 Bob Parvin, “At Lucas Monument, Neglect Eclipses History,” 1972, Box 1, Lucas Gusher Monument Association,
TEM.
16 “A Brief Summary of the Lucas Gusher Monument Association,” 1988.
17 Belden Associates, “A Feasibility Study for a Spindletop Amusement Park in Beaumont, Texas, Conducted for
Rotary Club of Beaumont,” October 1965, iii, v, Box 1, Lucas Gusher Monument Association, TEM.

72
Many unique attractions suggest themselves, and standard attractions at other amusement parks can be
harmonized with the theme by proper design.”18 Proposed attractions ranged from a replica of
Spindletop, “mechanized so visitors could go ‘down hole,’” to a pipeline “the public could ride through,
visualizing products as they did so.” These attractions, Clark wrote in a proposal to potential corporate
sponsors, “would educate visitors to the complexities of the petroleum industry while simultaneously
entertaining them.”19
Joe Belden further discussed “something ‘tall’ that could be built that would be seen from all
directions.” He suggested “an ‘Eiffel Tower’ in the form of a gigantic drilling rig, with restaurants, exhibits,
observation decks, and the like at various levels.”20 The theme park idea apparently did not arouse
sufficient corporate interest needed to foot the bill, and local civic leaders pivoted to more traditional
ideas.21 The underlying thematic excitement surrounding the Gladys City boomtown and Lucas Gusher,
however, remained a driving force in new discussions. Most people agreed that even if a wooden derrick
would not serve as an Eiffel Tower for Beaumont, its iconicity and association with material wealth
meant it could serve as a thematic focal point for a new attraction.
Crisis, Localism, and Beaumont’s Bicentennial Commission
By the 1970s, Southeast Texas had established itself as the world’s leading oil producer.
America’s “Third Coast” emerged as a leader not just in the extraction of petroleum from the ground,
but also in deep-water drilling and large-scale manufacturing in petrochemicals. The cities of Beaumont,
Port Arthur, and Orange, 30 miles to the east, comprised the “Golden Triangle” of Southeast Texas’s
18 Ibid., 25.
19 James A. Clark, “A Proposal for Petroleum Industry Cooperation and Participation in the Creation of a Spindletop
Theme Park at Beaumont, Texas,” November 17, 1965, Box 1, Lucas Gusher Monument Association, TEM.
20 Joe Belden to Will E. Wilson, November 17, 1965, Box 1, Lucas Gusher Monument Association, TEM.
21 When 1,043 people from the area responded to a survey querying the appeal of an amusement park “using the
oil industry as the theme”, a majority felt it was either an “Excellent” (18%) or “Good” idea (44%). 16% found it
“Fair”; 9% “Poor”; and 13% marked “Don’t Know.” See Belden Associates, “A Feasibility Study.”

73
industrial production. By 1970, this area employed a quarter of a million people across approximately
100 industries engaged in oil production and refining, synthetic rubber plants, petrochemical plants,
steel fabricators and products, and shipbuilding. Nationally recognized corporations such as DuPont
Chemical, Mobil Oil, Goodyear Tire, and Bethlehem Steel (which assembled both oil rigs and ships) made
their home in the Golden Triangle.22 At the same time, drilling for oil went offshore. The industry first
entered the Gulf of Mexico in 1933, but within half a century, had created “on the continental shelf the
most extensively developed offshore fields in the world.”23
Even as civic leaders debated how best to memorialize their industrial past, oil extraction
continued in and around Beaumont. New leases for exploratory wells cropped up in residential
neighborhoods, with lucky homeowners receiving a share of the royalties if oil was discovered.24 These
wells drilled far deeper than those of the previous booms. In addition to the ongoing sulfur production
on the Spindletop dome, Philip B. Lucas of Houston initiated a new drill on the southwest flank of the old
dome, only 3,200 feet from the original gusher. Lucas noted that “it was almost impossible to find a well
site on the large tract because the surface [was] covered with abandoned earthen oil storage tanks built
in 1902.” The Lucas Gusher originally hit oil at 1,020 feet. The new venture, 69 years later, would drill
7,500 feet.25 This continued activity throughout Beaumont explained why local civic leaders sought to
establish a permanent museum on the grounds of Lamar University—two miles north of the original
site—where no active drilling would inhibit visitation.
What would end up becoming Beaumont’s permanent tourist attraction was a re-creation of the
Gladys City boomtown, though initially this was meant to serve as just one component of a larger
22 “Area and City Analysis,” c. 1970, Box 1, Lucas Gusher Monument Association, TEM.
23 Douglas Lee and Joel Sartore, “America’s Third Coast,” National Geographic, Vol. 182, no. 1 (July 1992): 22.
24 “Oil Well is Drilled Near Cardinal Drive,” February 2, 1966, Accession 1995.020, Box 13, File 20, Charlene Kiker
Papers, THL.
25 “Another Lucas Stakes Spindletop Oil Location,” Houston Chronicle, August 27, 1970, Box 1, Lucas Gusher
Monument Association, TEM.

74
museum complex.26 With the reemergence of the modern historic preservation movement and the rise
of heritage tourism, the United States saw an influx of museums established in the 1960s and 1970s. The
Spindletop Museum was one of many that did not endure. As early as January 1, 1971, a Spindletop Oil
Field Museum had opened to the public at 8865 College Street on Highway 90, five miles west of
downtown Beaumont.27 A second iteration opened to the public on April 8, 1978 at 950 Florida Avenue,
converted from a vacated public school on Lamar’s campus. This version fared better than the first.
28 It
ultimately fell short, however, in popularity compared to the replica boomtown that had opened in
concert with Beaumont’s Bicentennial celebrations in 1976.
Americans experienced their Bicentennial celebrations in much more localized fashion than
those celebrating the Centennial a hundred years before. In No Direction Home: The American Family
and the Fear of National Decline, 1968-1980, Natasha Zaretsky traces the way planners crafted national
celebrations with Watergate, Vietnam, and economic recession looming large in the country’s collective
mindset. Organizers “adopted a counterintuitive strategy that decentralized the celebration, distanced it
from the federal government, and honored the family, the ethnic tribe, and the local community in lieu
of the nation.”29 Christopher Capozzola argues that this phenomenon represented the “search for self”
26 “Long Range Master Plan—Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum, A Living History Experience,” 3,
Accession 2001.029, Box 12, Folder 39, Spindletop 2001 Commission Papers, THL.
27 The museum displayed artifacts and oil field equipment from the 1901-1902 era. The Sun Oil Company had
donated its former geophysics laboratory building to the Lucas Gusher Monument Association for use as a
museum to be managed by Lamar State College of Technology (today Lamar University). On January 24, 1975, the
Lucas Gusher Monument Association deeded Lamar University the building and land, with funds from their sale
earmarked for construction of a future museum; “A Brief Summary of the Lucas Gusher Monument Association,”
1988; “Lucas Gusher Monument” brochure, c. 1971, Box 1, Spindletop 50th Anniversary, TEM.
28 “Spindletop Memorial Museum Project, Relocation – First Phase,” Box 1, Lucas Gusher Monument Association,
TEM; Al Navarro, “Old school building now heritage showcase,” University Press, April 8, 1978, Box 1, Lucas Gusher
Monument Association, TEM. Much of the collection was moved to the Texas Energy Museum when it opened in
downtown Beaumont in 1989.
29 Natasha Zaretsky, No Direction Home: The American Family and the Fear of National Decline, 1968-1980 (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 22. Zaretsky describes the sense of local pride driving Bicentennial
celebrations as “diversity” or “pluralist” nationalism, which sought to create “a sense of national unity precisely
through a carefully coordinated showcasing of difference.” Diversity nationalism revolved around “a set of
domestic questions about the relationship between American national identity and subnational or transnational
axes of identity, including race, gender, ethnicity, culture, and region” (p. 144). In this case, Southeast Texas

75
that characterized much of the 1970s. A burgeoning interest in local history, genealogy, and American
folk culture governed celebrations across the country at a time Daniel Rodgers has described as an “age
of fracture.”30 Local history museums sprang up across the country while attendance at heritage sites
blossomed. Bicentennial nostalgia, Capozzola argues, also represented “avoidance, an embrace of an
imagined peaceful past that helped people to avoid the fractious present. Equal parts quest and escape,
the localism of the Bicentennial gave Americans a new way out of failed national narratives without
having to take responsibility for answering big national questions.”31 One such question was how to
confront the nation’s energy crisis, and its reliance on foreign oil imports, highlighted by the OPEC oil
embargo of 1973.
Domestic oil production peaked in the United States in 1970. The nation increasingly relied on
foreign oil, with 42 percent of its oil imports coming from the Middle East by 1973. In October of that
year, member nations of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) announced an oil
embargo, banning shipment of oil to the United States and several of its allies, in response to military
support for Israel in the preceding years of conflict. The embargo quickly raised prices and curtailed
supply. By the nation’s “season of darkness” in December 1973, crude oil prices had risen 470 percent
since January.32 The energy crisis forced Americans to confront the reality that they had become
overwhelmingly dependent on foreign oil and sent the economy into a tailspin. Despite the embargo
ending in March 1974, inflation and unemployment continued to plague the country in the ensuing
embodied unique, regional difference as an oil hub. This showcasing of difference, along with Cold War
nationalism, emerged in response to perceptions of national decline.
30 Daniel Rodgers, The Age of Fracture (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011). A sense of
atomization and disaggregation of identity populates Rodgers’s analysis of intellectual transformations in the
1970s, as a Foucault-inspired sense of power dispersed out of structures and into culture and the discursive.
31 Christopher Capozzola, “’It Makes You Want to Believe in the Country’: Celebrating the Bicentennial in an Age of
Limits,” in America in the Seventies, eds. Beth Bailey and David Farber (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2004),
38-39.
32 Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore and Thomas J. Sugrue, These United States: A Nation in the Making, 1890 to the
Present (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2015), 507-10.

76
years. By mid-decade, Americans had lost trust in the Presidency, lost the war in Vietnam, and had lost
the ability to power their cars, homes, and cities with a resource whose supply had once seemed
inexhaustible. “The American century,” Glenda Gilmore and Thomas Sugrue suggest, “a long period of
unsurpassed economic and diplomatic power, seemed to be over.”33 In this context, it is clear what
Beaumont’s Bicentennial Commission hoped to achieve when it selected Spindletop as its theme. In the
wake of national disillusion, civic leaders turned to their local history at its moment of triumph.
Quite simply, Spindletop represented American strength, both economically and culturally, at
precisely the moment when the nation’s grasp on these traits seemed to be slipping away. If an “overly
bureaucratic and regulatory state was a cause of national enervation,” Zaretsky contends, then
commemoration of Spindletop and repeated use of gusher imagery did cultural work on multiple
levels.34 This form of memorialization countered narratives of oil dependency following the OPEC
embargo with a reminder of Texas’s prolific oil reserves; it also reminded Americans of the strength of
their nation’s industrial prowess. The careful management of the oil industry’s image in an “historic”
manner—by focusing on the 1901 gusher as an event worthy of Bicentennial commemoration—also
shifted attention away from contemporary production amidst growing environmental concerns.
Rendering the Ephemeral Permanent
The Bicentennial Commission of the City of Beaumont approached the Lucas Gusher Monument
Association with the suggestion that “the erection and operation of a replica of Gladys City the Spindle
Top Oil Field ‘Boomtown,’” would serve as an “appropriate commemoration” for both the nation’s twohundredth anniversary and the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Lucas Gusher. The two entities officially
33 Ibid., 512.
34 Zaretsky, No Direction Home, 181.

77
joined forces on May 27, 1975.35 In the preceding months, the Association had begun raising funds and
awarded the contract to H. B. Neild and Sons for the reconstruction. The firm estimated the recreated
boomtown would cost roughly a quarter of a million dollars to build, and would be located on Lamar
University’s campus, two miles north of the original site.36
Lamar University, which would inherit and administer the replica boomtown for use as an
educational extension facility, appointed Calvin B. Smith as Director of Museum Services. Smith oversaw
the creation of the Gladys City Boomtown Museum and served as its first executive director. Smith
acknowledged that “we are not attempting to create another amusement park,” but rather to establish a
“historical, living museum.” While he “[hoped] it will be fun to ‘participate’ in our town, the primary
objective is to let the visitor get a glimpse of what life was like during the mad scramble for oil and
fortunes seventy-five years ago.” Importantly, Smith noted that “those who made it and those who
didn’t will be treated with equal respect.” The Gladys City Boomtown, from the onset, was meant to
provide a broad social portrait of daily life in a boomtown, not just a celebration of the oilmen who hit it
big.37
To create a living, breathing outdoor museum, planners had to determine what exactly life was
like in an ephemeral boomtown environment. The planners relied heavily on the C. B. Hice Directory of
Spindletop, published between 1903 and 1905. The directory listed the residents, their occupations, and
the companies and businesses that operated in this transient place. “In recreating a special event, scene,
building or furnishings for a museum,” Smith argued, “the first priority is authenticity.” Use of the Hice
Directory, planners felt, would help them “represent to the audience what the first official boom town
35 Lucas Gusher Monument Association to Bicentennial Commission of City of Beaumont, May 27, 1975, Box 1,
Lucas Gusher Monument Association, TEM.
36 “A Brief Summary of the Lucas Gusher Monument Association,” 1988; “Estimate of Proposed Gladys City,” June
13, 1975, Box 1, Lucas Gusher Monument Association, TEM.
37 Calvin B. Smith, “Reconstructing the Past: The Tour; The Last Building; The Utilization of Structures,” Box 1, Lucas
Gusher Monument Association, TEM.

78
was, and was like, from 1901 through 1906.”38 Nevertheless, an inherent uncertainty existed at the core
of these efforts, with Smith acknowledging that people had competing memories of Gladys City’s
atmosphere. To some, it was a “rip-snorting boom town; to another it was a Dodge City; to others, it was
a peaceful, busy oil field community.”39 Even if planners could accurately recreate period buildings,
capturing the atmosphere would require some creative imagination.
The decision on which buildings and businesses to include in the boomtown stemmed from both
the need for representative establishments and what made sense for tourists. Smith employed the logic
of necessity for some of the buildings. For example, “horses were almost the singular method” for
transporting the equipment needed to operate the oil field. Therefore, he felt “a livery is not only
appropriate but essential.” Similarly, given the prominence of wood for erecting derricks, tanks,
buildings, and for use as fuel, “a lumber company such as Kirby, which did have a yard on Spindle Top,”
also made sense.40 Feasibility from a museum maintenance and tourist perspective also drove decisionmaking. Roaches, rot, and shortages of drinking water all took a backseat to visitor safety and comfort.
Smith and the museum planners attempted to strike a balance between recreating what they
viewed as an authentic environment and upholding best practices in the preservation and maintenance
of the historic collections within each building. Climate control posed a significant challenge in this
regard. They were “desirous of leaving the street as it would have been with the mud and atmosphere it
generated but with the obvious potential of creating a ruinous mess within each structure.” Smith
located early photographs that depicted walkways placed between most buildings. This enabled his crew
to render the site accessible while also maintaining a degree of historical accuracy. The need to adhere
38 Calvin B. Smith, “Recommendation to the project committee regarding the Bicentennial Reconstruction of
Gladys City,” Box 1, Lucas Gusher Monument Association, TEM.
39 Ralph Ramos, “Gladys City—rowdy boomtown or peaceful community?” Beaumont Sunday Enterprise-Journal,
April 27, 1975, Accession 2004.043, Box 27, Folder 6, Gwendolyn Wingate Papers, THL. According to this source,
Gladys City last until around 1933, eight years after the second boom of 1925 had died down.
40 Smith, “Recommendation to the project committee.”

79
to modern building regulations posed some challenges, but Smith believed these did not ultimately
deter from their ability to generate an appropriate image of what an oilfield boomtown was like at the
turn of the century. The lumber used for construction, for instance, had to be treated “far beyond what
was done 75 years ago but the effect [was] still maintained.”41
Construction unfolded rather quickly, beginning in August 1975, with work on the exteriors of
thirteen frame buildings finished by November. Workers continued adding interior detail such as period
wallpaper through the winter as Smith and fellow planners began assembling and exhibiting artifacts
that had gathered over the previous 18 months. In total, they accumulated antiques of the era worth
$50,000. “Many relatives of the people who lived and worked on the hill have come forward with
furniture, photographs, maps, ledgers, and other items,” Smith noted.42 Five wooden derricks also stood
guard outside the buildings, as well as wooden storage tanks and other large oilfield equipment.
41 Smith, “Reconstructing the Past.”
42 Beth Barlow, “Gladys City Again,” Beaumont Sunday Enterprise-Journal, November 16, 1975, Box 1, Lucas Gusher
Monument Association, TEM; Tommy Pinkard, “Gladys City Boomtown,” Texas Highways, Vol. 24, no. 8 (April
1977): 12-14, Box 7M1, Folder 8, Spindletop Museum Papers, LUASC.
Figure 17 – Exterior view of Spindletop/Gladys City Boomtown Museum, c. 2014. Photograph
by Carol M. Highsmith. Photo courtesy of Library of Congress.

80
The Gladys City Boomtown opened to the public on January 10, 1976, exactly 75 years from the
original Lucas Gusher. The most notable of the museum’s early guests was First Lady Betty Ford, who
toured each of the site’s buildings with Mrs. Joza Bullington, wife of Texas Senator John Tower. Mrs. Ford
laughed when learning that Gladys City had been reconstructed with local, not federal funds, replying,
“That’s wonderful—that’s unusual!”43 The idea that the boomtown would eventually complement a
larger museum complex prompted a second relocation of the 1941 granite obelisk to the site in 1977.
44
Calvin B. Smith had initially planned for docents to lead visitors through the boomtown, but self-guided
tours with a suggested clockwise walking tour route eventually became the established touring
method.45 The first building early guests would have toured was the Gladys City Oil and Gas
Manufacturing Company Office. This structure depicts the office of the first company formed in 1892 to
drill for oil at Spindletop, making it a fitting start to the tour. The humble office space includes two period
desks, with business documents including stock certifications and the original map of Gladys City drawn
by founder Pattillo Higgins on display.
The second building visitors could enter was Thomas’s Drug Store, with two signs on the front
advertising a “Doctors Office” and “Milk Shakes.” The front room recreates a 1911 soda fountain with
homemade ice cream sitting on simulated marble counter tops typical of the era. A 1996 guidebook
states, “Not all of the roustabouts, drillers, roughnecks and toolpushers were hard-bitten, hard-drinking
caricatures of oil field workers. Some were good Christian boys and young men who enjoyed a soda pop
more than a drink of whiskey.” Confectionaries were successful businesses despite the high costs to run
the electricity needed for refrigeration. Behind the soda fountain, a backroom displays a doctor’s office
with equipment typical of the early twentieth century. Few doctors practiced in the oil field, though
43 “Betty Ford accepts Gladys City gift,” Box 7M1, Folder 8, Spindletop Museum Papers, LUASC.
44 “A Brief Summary of the Lucas Gusher Monument Association,” 1988; Richard Stewart, “So how do you move a
monument?” Beaumont Sunday Enterprise-Journal, September 19, 1976, Box 7M1, Folder 2, Spindletop Museum
Papers, LUASC.
45 W. S. Leonard to John E. Gray, January 20, 1976, Box 7M1, Folder 2, Spindletop Museum Papers, LUASC.

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accidents and minor injuries were common. “Doc” Thomas, as he was known in Gladys City, “helped as
much as he could, from providing medicines to dealing with minor injuries and birthing babies.” The
doctor’s office displays an examination table, a wheelchair, and a machine to test for eyeglasses.46
The four buildings along the boomtown’s western row were the Beaumont Board of Trade,
General Store, Dry Goods Store, and Post Office. The Oil Exchange and Board of Trade opened on April
18, 1901, four months after the Lucas Gusher. The stock exchange played an important role in protecting
investors from crooked operators keen on profiting from the lack of regulation on the sale and exchange
of oil leases. Developers were able to reproduce a chalkboard listing stocks and their prices from a 1903
photograph. The General Store sold “everything and anything necessary to feed or equip a household”—
fresh and canned foods, tobacco, work clothing, flour, cornmeal, and rice were some of the goods
available to buy. Also on display are a two-man buck saw for cutting timber and two oil lamps. Upstairs
lived the proprietor, who would rent extra bedrooms to accommodate the large influx of “boomers” to
the town. In the early twentieth century, general stores began specializing in niches, including hardware,
grocery, and dry goods. Mr. A. L. Gibson opened the Dry Goods Store during the Spindletop boom,
offering furnishings for both men and women. Despite the rough-and-tumble nature of Gladys City,
46 “Museum Guidebook: Spindletop Gladys City Boomtown Museum,” 1996, 4-5, Box 7M1, Folder 9, Spindletop
Museum Papers, LUASC.
Figures 18 and 19 – Views of Thomas’s Drug Store at the Spindletop/Gladys City Boomtown Museum, c. 2021.
On the left, the front room soda fountain; on the right, the back-room doctor’s office. Photos courtesy of author.

82
those who worked for wages purchased consumer goods at stores such as this one. Visitors could also
tour the post office next door, where Mr. Gibson would have served his joint duty as the town’s
Postmaster.47
Visitors could enter several buildings on the boomtown’s southern flank, including those of T. A.
Lamb & Sons Printers—added at a later date—and the Edgerton Photographic Studio. On the site’s
eastern flank sits the Walkenshaw Tank Company, the Broussard Livery Stable, the Southern Carriage
Works, and the Nelson and White Surveyors Office, each telling a part of the story of life in this
ephemeral place. Broussard’s Livery Stable, for example, displays equipment used for freight hauling on
farms and for the oil industry. On the building’s left wall is a display of sixty common oil field drilling
tools. A sign above the entrance advertises Mr. Broussard as Gladys City’s “Undertaker.” Mortuaries often
evolved from early livery stables, as coffins were hauled in addition to loads of lumber, pipe, and large
equipment needed at drilling sites.48
The site’s largest structure included two adjoining institutions: Grinnell’s Log Cabin Saloon and
the Barber Shop. Despite its commanding presence in the recreated boomtown, the saloon was not
actually in Gladys City, but stood roughly 40 yards from the original gusher site. No businesses within the
47 Ibid., 8-14.
48 Ibid., 7-8, 16-20.
Figures 20 and 21 – On the left, a view of the General Store at the Spindletop/Gladys City Boomtown Museum, c. 2021. On the right, a view
of the Dry Goods Store, c. 2021. Photos courtesy of author.

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town’s limits were permitted to sell alcohol. Grinnell’s was located “on the rough part of the hill, called
Old Spindletop, and was the only distributor of Pabst Beer in the Beaumont area.” The saloon offered a
“Driller’s Lunch every day from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. This most likely consisted of beef brisket, beans,
cornbread, and beer”—a “substantial, inexpensive, and probably very monotonous” meal. Chairs and
tables, where tourists can sit and enjoy snacks and light beverages, are modern reproductions of types
that would have been used around the turn of the century. The upstairs “house of ill repute” was used to
house the museum’s offices, for a time. Built against the saloon’s exterior wall, guests can peek into the
Barber Shop, where workers “could have a shave, a haircut, and dental work with the same individual
doing all of the work.”49
Heritage and the Creation of a Comfortable Past
This outdoor museum focuses on the social history of an early-century boomtown. The story the
museum tells directs attention to the daily lives of the men who toiled in the oil fields and their families
who called Gladys City home, even if just for a time. The actual work of the wildcatters, roughnecks, and
rig builders in drilling for this resource remains ancillary. Oil tanks, a large band wheel, and other oilfield
equipment lay scattered across the museum grounds, but these structures appear complementary to the
boomtown’s 14 buildings and the stories they share of daily life in this transient community. Part of this
focus stems from the visuality, or lack thereof, in drilling underground for oil. What can be visualized
more easily are the businesses that cropped up to support the community that drilled in the Spindletop
fields. The Gladys City Boomtown Museum in 1976 made the decision to focus on the more mundane
aspects of life in Gladys City—what people ate, where they shopped, and how leases were sold—rather
than the herculean efforts it took teams of oilmen to drill for and ultimately control these gushers of
black gold.
49 Ibid., 14-16.

84
Why? For one, the 1970s bore witness to a rise of heritage sites across the nation. The crucial
element in understanding heritage, or as some call it, cultural tourism, is that “while it looks old, heritage
is actually something new.”50 In Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage, Barbara
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett details many of the qualities that make up this specific brand of tourism that
gained steam in the 1970s. “Locations become museums themselves within a tourism industry,”
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett writes, stressing heritage’s place-based and localized nature.51 She notes further,
“Heritage is a mode of cultural production in the present that has recourse to the past.” Its problematic
nature, for her and other scholars, arises when heritage sites mask their recent creation behind the
pretense of preservation, conservation, reclamation, or similar buzzwords. Heritage sites often gain
much of their touristic value from the conflation of the actual historical site with the display techniques
for producing the site. While planners in Beaumont were upfront about the recreated nature of their
boomtown, the use of period antiques, historic oilfield equipment, and its proximity to the original site
all lent an air of authenticity that the museum marketed to visitors. Created through exhibition and
display of a place deemed “real” and “authentic,” heritage becomes the “transvaluation of the obsolete,
the mistaken, the outmoded, the dead, and the defunct,” granting a second life to places that, for
whatever reason, have fallen by the wayside.52
50 Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1998), 7. See also, Bella Dicks, Culture on Display: The Production of Contemporary Visitability
(Berkshire: Open University Press, 2004).
51 Ibid., 151. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett continues, “Heritage is a way of producing ‘hereness’,” 153. This localized, sitespecific nature of heritage distinguishes it from other forms of tourism, such as theme parks, which seem to exist
in arbitrary relation to the landscapes within which their built. Heritage’s site-specific nature highlights what
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett calls the value of difference. “To compete for tourists, a location must become a destination.
To compete with each other, destinations must be distinguishable… ‘Sameness’ is a problem the industry faces,”
152.
52 Ibid., 149. The added value does not necessarily replace an existing productive economy. In some cases, profits
from the heritage industry might surpass those of the place’s earlier function. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett writes, “A
place such as Salem, Massachusetts, may be even more profitable as an exhibition of a mercantile center than it
was as a mercantile center,” 7.

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Why did the heritage industry achieve such popularity in the 1970s, though? For one, its
emergence coincided with aforesaid Bicentennial celebrations, as well as a burst in postwar tourism
made possible by the increased prosperity of many middle-class Americans and the advent of new forms
of transportation, such as jet travel. Colonial Williamsburg, for instance, saw an uptick from 166,000
paying visitors in 1947 to 710,000 in 1967.53 David Lowenthal, one of heritage’s staunchest critics, reveals
that the 1970s were a golden age of nostalgia. “As the present grew woeful,” he writes, “modernity lost
its charm.”54 Preservation itself was for Lowenthal a quintessentially modern phenomenon, as the pace
of change—evanescence, as he calls it—wrought by technology, pollution, and popularity, triggered
protective action. “Amid wholesale change we cling to familiar vestiges,” he notes.55 Americans’ growing
sense of disaffection with the government left many ready to retreat into a seemingly better time.
Many of the better-known heritage sites throughout the country—Colonial Williamsburg, Salem,
and Ellis Island—sanitize the more difficult or controversial lessons to present a more comfortable past.
Lowenthal contends that heritage presents a “starry-eyed view of wretched times”—a notion reinforced
by inclusion of modern amenities amidst a boomtown landscape that touts itself as rough-and-tumble.56
The Gladys City Boomtown addresses just how dangerous and risky work in the Spindletop oil fields
could be, but this message rings hollow through its function as a modern-day heritage site and place of
entertainment. The site, moreover, says nothing of the continued environmental ills plaguing the oil
53 Mike Wallace, Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1996), 188.
54 David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country: Revisited (1985; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015),
36.
55 Ibid., 28. Urban heritage in places such as Europe and Japan were devasted by aerial bombing and destruction
during World War II, for instance.
56 Ibid., 52. Lowenthal writes that nostalgia touts memory with the pain removed—it excludes the pain, bad
memories, bad conditions of the past—“we want to relive those thrilling days of yesteryear, but only because we
are absolutely assured that those days are out of reach.”

86
industry. Its presence on Lamar University’s campus, removed from the now-inaccessible original site,
should and could remind visitors of this fact if it were addressed more candidly.
The comfortable past that the Gladys City recreation presents is best exemplified by its annual
“Boom Days” folk festival, which functioned as a linchpin, both financially and culturally, of the site’s
programming through the 1980s. Boom Days served as a meeting ground for a celebration of local
culture and folk art. The Gladys City Boomtown Museum held its 5th Annual Spindletop Boom Days on
September 24-25, 1983. The event brought together scores of craftspeople. “Leatherwork, theorem
painting, weaving, and scrimshaw carving” were just some of the highlights “from a time when
handcrafted skill was not just a vanishing act, but a way of life.”57 Visitors were able to watch
demonstrations in chair caning, calligraphy, pottery, cornhusk, dollmaking, smocking, rope-making,
gunsmithing and shooting, and woodcarving. The Tevis Trade Fair enabled tradespeople to “sell their
turn-of-the-century” wares—antique furniture, glassware, toys, dolls, and jewelry—under colorful tents
within the Gladys City grounds.58 The “Boom Days” folk festival became just another site of recreation
and commerce similar to other folk festivals peddling the same wares, with the focus on site-specific
history an increasingly incidental endeavor.
Boom Days celebrated American craftsmanship in an atmosphere of fun and conviviality, one
that exhibited the “full flavor of life in Beaumont and Gladys City at the turn of the century.” Barbershop
quartets and other live entertainment made their rounds throughout the festival grounds. The midway
featured a live elephant while guests tested their skills in watermelon seed spitting, horseshoes, log
rolling, and other activities. The festival encouraged audience participation in gingerbread cookie
decorating, hat making, and calligraphy. Visitors could furthermore interact with “authentic residents”
57 “Spindletop Boom Days, a historic folk festival at Gladys City,” brochure, c. 1984, Accession 1995.020, Box 12,
Folder 17, Charlene Kiker Papers, THL.
58 Elaine J. Butler, “Spindletop Boom Days: Historical festival to reconstruct ‘the way it was’ at Gladys City,”
University Press, 1983, Scrapbook – 5
th Annual Spindletop Boom Days, LUASC.

87
such as “Anthony F. Lucas, Gladys Bingham (the 12-year-old girl for whom the city was named in 1901),
and T. T. Pollard, one of Beaumont’s early educators.” Guests were encouraged to watch a reenactment
of a temperance parade and look out for Pattillo Higgins “to approach you to buy oil shares.” The Texas
Genealogical and Historical Society staffed a booth where trained genealogists were available to help
people trace their ancestry.59
Guests immersed themselves in the sights, sounds, and smells of a boomtown atmosphere, but
one shorn of its rougher edges. Planners asserted the festival “authentically reconstructs ‘the way it
was’” in 1901.60 Lacking the danger, disease, crime, and overall risk associated with turn-of-the-century
boomtowns, Boom Days presented anything but “the way it was.” The festival, however, exhibited many
of the hallmark characteristics of 1970s heritage: a celebration of American craftsmanship, local history,
genealogy, and the “old-time fun” of what many perceived to be the “good old days” of American
strength, ingenuity, and vitality. That this warm, fuzzy, and highly selective view of the past was an
entirely new fabrication seemed entirely beside the point to planners and visitors alike.
Museum attendance through the 1970s and 1980s ranged between 10,000 and 15,000 visitors
per year. The admission price varied over the years, but always remained inexpensive. In 1985, adults
paid 50 cents for entry and children cost 25 cents.61 Retired oil people and school groups comprised a
significant portion of those in attendance. During the 1985-1986 school year, the museum admitted
5,573 students, while 3,476 paying guests toured the grounds over this same period.62 In 1989, to
increase national attention, the museum’s Advisory Board voted to add “Spindletop” to the name,
59 “Spindletop Boom Days,” brochure, c. 1984; Butler, “Spindletop Boom Days.”
60 Butler, “Spindletop Boom Days.”
61 “Museum Services Report,” January 29, 1980, Box 7M1, Folder 2, Spindletop Museum Papers, LUASC; “Museum
Services, a/k/a Spindletop Museum, a/k/a Gladys City Boomtown,” Lamar University Museum Services Newsletter,
Vol. 1, no. 1 (Fall 1985), Box 7M1, Folder 2, Spindletop Museum Papers, LUASC.
62 “Increase in number of Spring school tours and tourist visitation,” Lamar University Museum Services Newsletter
(Summer 1986), Box 7M1, Folder 8, Spindletop Museum Papers, LUASC.

88
thereby changing its name to the Spindletop/Gladys City Boomtown Museum. In 1992, attendance
figures had increased to 16,950 for the year.63 By the 1990s, the museum had become a beacon of
community involvement through its programming, which remained focused on heritage and education.
Hollywood Comes to Spindletop
A key visual component of the boomtown museum was the collection of wooden derricks that
stood tall throughout the grounds. These structures framed the site as thematic, but static, beacons of
industry. The idea was to include a series of derricks strategically placed to provide a condensed view of
a historic oil field. Their value rested in their visual power, suggestive of Frank Trost’s renowned
photograph capturing the Lucas Gusher as it burst forth from the ground. Mobile drilling technology and
the ability to put an engine, drawworks, and eventually the derrick itself on moving vehicles rendered
these types of standing derricks obsolete by midcentury. Modern drilling techniques also control
underground pressures to prevent gushers, in effect rendering the Lucas Gusher and similar sightings as
“historic” phenomena. By 1988, only one of the five replica rigs built at Gladys City in 1976 remained. In
1986, Hurricane Bonnie destroyed three of the derricks while the fourth was lost in another storm.
Following the hurricane, the museum held a “country-fair style community celebration” to raise money
to “raise the rigs – and restore one of our most important community landmarks.”64
In April 1988, the museum contracted W. G. “Dub” Shivers to build a new, 64-foot derrick in the
middle of Gladys City square. Rig-building ran in the family, and Shivers relied in part on his grandfather’s
log book, which included specifications for a 64-foot rig built for $45 on November 17, 1917 for Cotton
Oil Company. “We’re tying this one down,” said Shivers as he supervised his crew. “Now this one part
63 Gladys City Advisory Board Meeting, August 17, 1989, Accession 1995.020, Box 12, Folder 21, Charlene Kiker
Papers, THL; “Gladys City figures show 19% increase,” S.E Texas Business Journal (March 1993), Accession
1995.020, Box 12, Folder 30, Charlene Kiker Papers, THL.
64 “Let’s Raise the Rigs,” brochure, c. 1986, Box 7M1, Folder 8, Spindletop Museum Papers, LUASC.

89
(tying it down) isn’t historically accurate, but we want it to stay,” he said, adding, “It will stand 75-mileper hour winds. A tornado could still get it though.” The derrick, with specially treated wood, cost
$10,000.65 The quiet power of the image of an oil derrick evolved through the twentieth century—an
image crafted through repeated depictions in popular culture. This process began almost immediately in
1901 with Frank Trost’s iconic photograph of the Lucas Gusher in action. The use of wooden derricks in
popular culture and in the built environment has continued in film, television, and other surprising ways
in the ensuing decades. These recurring depictions have cultivated the wooden derrick as an icon of
historicized industry.
The discovery of oil in Southeast Texas and the emergence of the film industry in the United
States began around the same time. The conniving oil tycoon and the adventurous wildcatter have been
popular Hollywood archetypes for over a century. Usually considered a subgenre of the Western, oil
flicks have informed our image of the industry for decades. This image included larger-than-life (and
usually flawed) heroic figures, sweeping landscapes promising either feast or famine, and the adventure
and danger associated with the hunt for oil. Like stories of cowboys and high school football players,
those of the Texas wildcatter have reached almost mythic proportions in popular culture. Jeanne Jakle
and Larry Ratliff write, “Long before Jed Clampett of TV’s Beverly Hillbillies (1962-1971) missed a rabbit
with a rifle shot only to discover bubbling crude in the 1960s and J. R. Ewing ruled the Dallas oil business
in the ‘80s, movie audiences were already quite familiar with big screen oil slicks.” Jakle and Ratliff
elaborate that “the most memorable characterization of oil tycoons were those of men and women who
were as dirty and as slippery as the substance itself.”66 Even if such television shows highlighted the
65 Alice Nolan, “Oil derrick builder keeps up tradition,” Beaumont Enterprise, July 22, 1988, Accession 1995.020,
Box 12, Folder 21, Charlene Kiker Papers, THL.
66 Jeanne Jakle and Larry Ratliff, “Well made: Search for crude in entertainment dates back decades,” San Antonio
Express News, January 2001, Lamar University Public Relations Campaign for Spindletop 2001 Centennial
Celebration [Book Two of Two], TEM. Oils flicks date back to the silent film era, at least as early as Mrs. Plum’s
Pudding (1915). Several notable entries in the genre include Boom Town (1940), Giant (1956), and CBS’s episode of
You Are There on Spindletop, which aired in 1955 and played for a time in the Spindletop Museum. For more on

90
unsavory qualities of their protagonists, these traits were often presented as byproducts of the dogged
pursuit for wealth and prosperity—a narrative approach the boomtown museum would replicate in its
presentation of boomtown life.
For The Stars Fell on Henrietta (1995), starring Robert Duvall and produced by Clint Eastwood,
Warner Bros. approached the Gladys City Museum for advice on how to reproduce a 1937 boomtown
and the requisite wooden derricks. The curator, Christy Martino, referred the studio’s set designers to a
familiar face, “Dub” Shivers, who had built the museum’s central derrick in 1988. He again used his
grandfather’s pattern of a 64-foot wooden derrick to design the film’s replicas. Constructing derricks for
a 1930s setting enabled Shivers to come full circle. “When I was in high school I went to work for my
grandfather helping him build derricks in Saratoga during the late 1930s,” he reminisced. Shivers and his
crew spent several weeks cutting and hauling lumber to Warner Bros.’ filming locations in Abilene and
Bartlett, Texas. “At first, they wanted me to build them,” he said, but “they decided to use their own
carpenters with me supervising the first one.”67 The derricks built for the 1995 film were, like those in the
Gladys City Boomtown Museum, historically accurate and capable of supporting the 75,000 to 80,000
pounds of weight necessary to drill thousands of feet underground. Their production for and use in The
Stars Fell on Henrietta reveals a shared thematic and visual vocabulary between Hollywood and the
Gladys City Boomtown Museum.
this genre, see Don Graham, Cowboys and Cadillacs: How Hollywood Looks at Texas (Austin: Texas Monthly Press,
1983).
67 Britt Hall, “Shivers Builds Wooden Derricks For Movie about Boomtown,” The Vindicator, March 27, 1994,
Accession 1995.020, Box 12, Folder 29, Charlene Kiker Papers, THL.

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This image of the traditional wooden derrick proliferated through popular culture and the built
environment in other surprising ways. The Houston Oilers were a professional football team formed in
1959, initially playing for the American Football League before joining the National Football League in
1970. The team played in Houston from 1960 to 1996, when owner Bud Adams moved the franchise to
Tennessee.68 In the franchise’s early years, the Oilers logo went through multiple busy iterations
involving an oilman and boomtown landscape. In 1975, the team finally settled on the iconic, Columbia
blue derrick with red trim on a white helmet. This design lasted until the franchise left Houston in
1996.69 In 2020, the XFL Houston Roughnecks resurrected and incorporated the classic Oilers logo in
their helmet design. The Oilers were not the only NFL franchise to rely on local industry for its theming—
the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers continue to do so—but the iconic simplicity of the
wooden derrick, seen in Hollywood depictions and at the Gladys City Boomtown Museum, reveals why
68 “Oilers Change Name to Titans,” CBSNews.com, November 14, 1998, accessed April 18, 2023, Oilers Change
Name To Titans - CBS News. After two years of public ridicule as the Tennessee Oilers, the franchise became the
Tennessee Titans in 1999 and NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue retired the Oilers logo and nickname, preventing
any potential future Houston franchise from using them. A new franchise, the Houston Texans, formed in 1999 and
played its first NFL season as an expansion team in 2002.
69 “Houston Oilers Logos History,” Chris Creamer’s SportsLogos.Net, accessed April 18, 2023, Houston Oilers Logos -
National Football League (NFL) - Chris Creamer's Sports Logos Page - SportsLogos.Net. The original Oilers logo in
1960 depicted a man wearing a blue uniform and donning a gold cowboy hat and gold boots standing in front of an
oil field. The background field showcased five derricks. A year later, the franchise modified the design slightly,
replacing the gold cowboy hat with a silver oil hat and simplifying the background boomtown. The franchise used
this variation for seven years, before changing the logo to a standalone derrick in 1969.
Figure 22 – Houston Oilers trading cards and sticker, c. (from left to right) 1991, 1980, 1995. Author’s personal collection.

92
the Oilers maintained it as their logo for so many years. In Beaumont alone, this image of the derrick
proliferated throughout the built environment as well.
The Parkdale Mall opened in Beaumont on October 11, 1973, and quickly became the region’s
largest shopping center.70 The mall incorporates imagery of a derrick into its design aesthetics and
marketing. The mall’s logo includes a stylized derrick with three dashes “erupting” from the top to signify
a gusher. This logo appears on signage throughout the mall. The Texas Energy Museum provided images
and information on Spindletop’s history to assist in the creation of a historicized, themed space within
the mall’s Food Court. This space includes a wraparound mural with colorful images of oil workers, brief
quotations, and a yellow background with hundreds of gushers lining an oil field horizon. Large, metallic
machine parts are affixed to support columns in the center of the Food Court. Lanterns, designed and
shaped with black wiring to resemble oil derricks, hang from the ceiling. For a time, the Beaumont
Visitors Information Center incorporated a wooden derrick into its building design. The Spindletop
Motel, southeast of Lamar University, featured an iron sign shaped like a derrick with the word
“Spindletop” descending the structure in red lettering. These themed representations of the derrick,
seen throughout the built environment, collectively reinforce a historicized image of industry long after
its wooden iteration had vanished from the landscape of modern drilling techniques.
70 “Parkdale Mall turns 45 this year,” Beaumont Enterprise, October 2, 2018, accessed April 18, 2023, Photos:
Parkdale Mall turns 45 this year (beaumontenterprise.com).
Figure 23 – View of Parkdale Mall Food Court with oil industry display, including derrick-themed light fixtures. Photo courtesy of author.

93
Las Vegas and the Recreation of the Lucas Gusher
Beaumont’s most famous derrick replica arrived in 2001. In 1998, then-Governor George W.
Bush and the Texas Legislature created the Spindletop 2001 Commission to develop a fitting tribute for
the event’s centennial. The celebration included construction of a 2,500-square-foot visitor center, four
new oil derricks, improved walkways, signs, and air-conditioning in some buildings at Gladys City. Other
parts of the centennial festivities included development of a permanent exhibit at the Texas Energy
Museum, an oral history project, student curricula, a commemorative cookbook, several fundraising
events, and an ambitious program planned for “The Big Day” on January 10, 2001.71
The centerpiece of this programming was the debut of the Spindletop/Gladys City Boomtown
Museum’s newest permanent fixture: a simulation of the Lucas Gusher. This would not be the first time
the museum staged a fake blowout, but the ability to do so required extensive planning and innovation.
During the museum’s opening ceremonies on January 10, 1976, a crew of three firemen turned on
pumps that “pushed 750 gallons a minute through three fire hoses, through a nozzle and into a plume of
water that roared through the top of the [central] derrick very much like that first gusher.” One spectator
said, “I thought they were gonna color the water black,” with a fireman dryly explaining, “It’s hard to dye
750 gallons of water a minute.”72 The gusher “erupted” again on January 10, 1986 in similar fashion to
mark to observance of the Texas Sesquicentennial, but the museum had never offered a permanent
simulation as part of the experience.73 This changed in 2001.
71 “Spindletop 2001,” Lamar University Public Relations Campaign for the Spindletop 2001 Centennial Celebration
[Book One of Two], TEM; Judith Linsley, “Spindletop/Gladys City Boomtown Museum recaptures oil boom days,”
Beaumont Journal, July 29-August 4, 1999, Accession 2001.029, Box 2, Folder 21, Spindletop 2001 Commission
Papers, THL; “Spindletop Centennial Commemorative Program – Remember the BOOM, Celebrate the FUTURE,”
11-12, Accession 2001.029, Box 1, Folder 19, Spindletop 2001 Commission Papers, THL.
72 Richard Stewart, “Firemen repay Gladys City gusher for favor,” Beaumont Enterprise journal, March 14, 1974,
Accession 2004.043, Box 29, Folder 6, Gwendolyn Wingate Papers, THL.
73 “Gusher re-enactment, Beaumont Fire Department,” brochure, c. 1986, Box 7M1, Folder 2, Spindletop Museum
Papers, LUASC.

94
Building a 65-foot-tall, 14,300-pound working replica of the Lucas Gusher on the museum
grounds brought together the expertise of Sina Nejad, president of Sigma Engineers, Inc., and Charles
Mason, Jr. of Mason Construction. The gusher had a price tag of around $350,000, raised in part by
“Gusher Club” school groups across Southeast Texas. “The challenge,” noted Nejad, “was for the derricks
to look authentic, but still meet current building codes.”74 Much of the cost derived from the materials
needed to build a permanent installation. Mason recalled that, unlike the historic wooden derricks,
which were built temporarily “as a means to an end,” their derrick “would be a monument.” This meant
that while the structure needed to look old (and temporary), Mason Construction needed to “beef it up”
with a hidden galvanized steel frame underneath the veneer of specially treated oak timber.75 To adhere
to OSHA requirements, Mason and his crew built the structure resting sideways rather than from the
ground up, which would have required extensive scaffolding. Once complete, two cranes lifted and
installed the derrick on a pad adjacent to Gladys City before a crowd of a hundred students on October
26, 2000.76
A more significant portion of the derrick’s cost came from the complex hydraulic and electrical
systems required to push 3,000 gallons of water per minute 125 feet skyward on a repeated basis. The
innovation required to engineer this attraction demanded a completely novel approach to the design.
Even though families, such as that of “Dub” Shivers, had been building derricks and oil rigs for almost a
century in Southeast Texas, Nejad and his team looked not to this region’s industrial legacy, but to Las
Vegas for inspiration on how to achieve this. The shift in design approach reveals that, although the 2001
74 “Spindletop Centennial Commemorative Program,” 10-11; “Spindletop 2001 Update,” March – May 2000,
Accession 2001.029, Box 10, Folder 3, Spindletop 2001 Commission Papers, THL. Code conformity held particular
importance given the hurricane that destroyed earlier replica iterations at the site.
75 Penny Clark and Evelyn M. Lord, eds. On Our Way to “The Big Day” (and beyond!), The Hundredth Anniversary of
the Lucas Gusher at “Spindletop” (Austin: Spindletop 2001 Commission, 2002), 82.
76 Clark and Lord, On Our Way to “The Big Day” (and beyond!), 84; Sina Nejad to Evelyn Lord, October 20, 2000,
Accession 2001.029, Box 2, Folder 25, Spindletop 2001 Commission Papers, THL; Andrea Wright, “Spindletop gala
to include gusher,” Beaumont Enterprise, February 19, 2000, Accession 2001.029, Box 2, Folder 26, Spindletop
2001 Commission Papers, THL.

95
working derrick appeared representative of Texas’s historic oil industry, its design and construction
reaffirmed the arrival of the entertainment industry to Beaumont. In his engineering design, Nejad
brought “Las Vegas glitz” to Spindletop.
To simulate the Lucas Gusher in permanent fashion, Nejad created an engineering illusion like
those used for fountain shows in Las Vegas. “We’re trying to make an illusion,” Nejad noted, “to depict
what happened a hundred years ago, following the same concept as in modern fountain design.” The
dancing fountains in front of the Bellagio Hotel and Casino, opened in 1998, proved prototypical in this
effort. “These things are becoming very popular in Las Vegas,” Nejad said, where there are “many
buildings with dancing waters in front of them.” Automated, computer-controlled devices with
compressed air and water, Nejad explained, “drive different valves and time discharges of water
differently, set to music, to achieve an illusion of water dancing in time to the music.”77 Nejad’s task, in
other words, was not to make Spindletop erupt, but to make it dance. Each time the gusher was
“blown,” a soundtrack created by Kevin Gaglianella would play in the background to “capture the feeling
of the rumble and roar that would have accompanied the incredible explosion of drill pipe, mud, gas and
oil in 1901.” These sound effects were “so very effective that the ground actually trembles.”78 Although
the Rotary Club’s vision for an oil field and boomtown theme park had never materialized, Nejad’s
embrace of Las Vegas fountain technology signaled a similar shift away from history and toward
entertainment. The design and display tactics from one of the nation’s preeminent tourist cities had fully
arrived with Beaumont’s newest attraction, ushering it fully into the age of postindustrial tourism.
77 Wright, “Spindletop gala to include gusher.” An ancillary debate concerned the frequency of simulations.
Discussion ranged between two to three times per day to no more than once a week or even once a month. To
erupt the gusher multiple times per day elicited water conservation concerns, and planners debated
implementation of a system for storing and recycling water. If discharged once a week or less, Nejad believed the
effect on the surrounding fields would be comparable to a normal rainstorm. The team ultimately decided on the
much more conservative, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly number of around once every few weeks.
78 Clark and Lord, On Our Way to “The Big Day” (and beyond!), 88.

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“The Big Day” arrived on the cold, gray morning of Wednesday January 10, 2001, an atmosphere
eerily reminiscent of the weather exactly one hundred years prior. The day’s activities heavily resembled
those of the “Boom Days” folk festivals from previous decades. Following remarks by the featured
speaker, Former President George H. W. Bush, nearly 20,000 people gathered around the grounds to see
the Lucas Gusher “blow in” at 10:32 a.m. “The ground actually shook as the gusher erupted,” recalled
Evelyn M. Lord, Chairman of the Spindletop Centennial Commission. Several of the onlookers “rushed to
be drenched by the volume of water,” while others “huddled beneath umbrellas or in the green ponchos
distributed by one of the event sponsors.” Lord concluded, “There was actual silence when the gusher
stopped after its three-minute performance, and then the crowd let out with mighty cheering and
applause.”79 Two miles south, at the original site of the Lucas Gusher, a different and far more somber
scene quietly unfolded.
A Century of Extraction and Beyond
As part of its commemoration, the Spindletop Centennial Commission also sought to reopen
public access to the original site.80 The problem was that a century of oil and sulfur extraction had left
79 Ibid., 128-131.
80 Early on, planners had hoped to transform one of the replica derricks into an observation tower, from which
guests could view the actual site of “The Hill” two miles to the south. The advent of the American Disability Act,
increased liability concern, and the expense of creating an elevator system and support platforms that would
Figures 24 and 25 – On the left, a view of the 2001 replica derrick standing alongside the relocated 1941 Lucas Gusher
Monument, c. 2021. On the right, a photo of the Centennial Celebration’s debut “blowing in” of the Lucas Gusher on the
morning of January 10, 2001. Photo on left courtesy of author. Photo on right courtesy of Tyrrell Historical Library.

97
the land treacherous to walk on and utterly inaccessible. National Geographic in 1992 described
Spindletop as having “the air of an abandoned battlefield”—a “testament to the rapacious days of the
birth of ‘big oil.’”81 The “exact location is not exactly scenic,” one journalist wrote in 2000, nor was
Spindletop “much of a hill anymore.” After a century of drilling, the land has subsided and a rain-filled,
marshy crater has formed in the sunken earth. Chunks of yellow sulfur, rusty pipe, and scrap metal from
abandoned well sites litter the surrounding landscape. Planners did not even know where the location of
the original gusher was located, relying on a combination of historic survey maps and GPS to track down
the old concrete monument base from 1941, now surrounded by water.82
Realizing the site’s topographic and environmental limitations, the commission settled on
development of a small park and viewing platform with interpretive panels half a mile east of the original
site. The team placed a 40-foot flagpole and a commemorative brass disc on the 1941 concrete platform,
just feet from the original gusher site.83 Security fencing surrounds the park, prohibiting visitors from
entering the surrounding landscape. Throughout these fields, lone pumpjacks, some partially
submerged, continue prodding away patiently for oil. The land remains extremely hazardous to walk on.
If Spindletop Park is rarely visited today, it is because there is nothing to see. And yet, it holds a certain
authenticity that the Gladys City Boomtown Museum cannot replicate. If the site is barren, boggy, and
visually opaque, visitors can at least appreciate an unmanipulated view of the toll that a century of heavy
extraction has taken on the landscape.
visually mar the boomtown theme, caused those involved to push for reopening the original site directly. See
“Long Range Master Plan—Spindletop Gladys City Boomtown Museum, A Living History Experience,” 11.
81 Lee and Sartore, “America’s Third Coast,” 21.
82 James Kimberly, “Spotting Spindletop,” Houston Chronicle, February 20, 2000, Accession 2001.029, Box 3, Folder
23, Spindletop 2001 Commission Papers, THL.
83 News Advisory, “Flagpole placed on Lucas Gusher No. 1 original well site in preparation of Spindletop
Centennial,” January 2, 2001, Lamar University Public Relations Campaign for the Spindletop 2001 Centennial
Celebration [Book One of Two], TEM.

98
The solitude one can experience at Spindletop Park mirrors much of Beaumont. Despite the
influx of museums downtown, there is almost no traffic at morning rush hour. The oil crash in the 1980s
left many Texans reeling. Houston, which had already begun diversifying into defense contracts, space
technology, and eventually personal computers, weathered the storm. Beaumont, however, was hit
hard. The city struggled through the 1980s with double-digit unemployment and international
competition in oil and shipbuilding. U.S. dependence on imported oil continued to rise from 36% in 1973
to 56% in 2000.84 Apart from some political maneuvering to establish the prison industry in the area,
Beaumont’s economic health stagnated in the twentieth century’s final decades. The reality at century’s
end was not so different from that a hundred years prior. Spindletop was, and remains, “the place where
Big Texas Oil erupted but promptly evaporated.”85
Profit from Spindletop’s booms went north—enough to Houston, but more to corporate and
banking centers such as New York and Pittsburgh. Michael Halbouty states a hard truth about the
realities of extractive industry: “When the gusher came, it changed the world, but it hasn’t changed
Beaumont a damn bit,” as he reflects on the century from a spacious office in Houston.86 Similar to coal
mining regions in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, corporations were reticent to build headquarters too
close to their resource extraction points. Houston, which already had a denser population and better
infrastructure in place before Spindletop, benefitted from its boomtown to the east.87 This atmosphere
of absence and decline in Beaumont reinforces the feeling that the oil industry, despite its continued
presence, has become a relic of the past. Production continues, but the public sees wooden derricks and
84 “Jim Vertuno, “From Spindletop to Silicon Prairie,” Associated Press, January 1, 2000; “State’s former stalwarts
struggle in new economy,” Brownwood Bulletin, July 16, 2000, Lamar University Public Relations Campaign for the
Spindletop 2001 Centennial Celebration [Book One of Two].
85 Mark Lisheron, “What ever happened to BEAUMONT the boomtown?” Austin American-Statesman, August 13,
2000, Lamar University Public Relations Campaign for the Spindletop 2001 Centennial Celebration [Book One of
Two].
86 Ibid.
87 Amy Bria, “Beaumont Didn’t Become an Oil Mecca. Why Not?” Beaumont Enterprise, January 7, 2001, Lamar
University Public Relations Campaign for the Spindletop 2001 Centennial Celebration [Book One of Two], TEM.

99
boomtown imagery more often than not alongside lone pumpjacks eking out what seem to be the last
remnants of oil from a barren landscape.
This historicized image of industry provides an extreme juxtaposition to the realities of ongoing
production in Texas and the nation at large. Today, the United States is producing more oil than ever
before. One of the results of the OPEC oil embargo in 1973 was a drive to render the nation energy
independent, lest foreign powers curtail supply in the future. In the twenty-first century, fracking and
other technologies have again made the U.S. the world’s leading oil producer.88 Production increased
despite mounting calls to stop the burning of fossil fuels to combat climate change. In 2017, Texas oil
production exceeded the state’s 1972 peak. In 2022, Texas alone produced roughly 1.84 billion barrels of
oil. In the final quarter of 2023, the United States was set to produce a global record of 13.3 barrels per
day of crude oil and gas condensate. Led by shale oil drillers in Texas and New Mexico’s Permian Basin,
the nation today is exporting the same amount of crude oil, refined products, and natural gas liquids as
both Saudi Arabia and Russia.89
Why accept the narrative that we must, as a species, stop burning our fossil fuels to slow climate
change when so much of our popular culture and built environment romanticizes, historicizes, and
obscures this industry? Beaumont’s historicization of the oil industry is one of many guises by which
communities have concealed the ongoing effects of continued drilling. In Los Angeles, California—sitting
atop another of the nation’s foremost oil reserves—industry officials have employed more direct
measures to obscure urban drilling. Many companies have adopted design aesthetics to mask
88 Henry Epp, “How the 1973 oil embargo changed the way the U.S. thinks about energy,” Marketplace, September
21, 2023, accessed January 16, 2024, How the 1973 oil embargo changed the way the U.S. thinks about energy -
Marketplace.
89 “Texas State Energy Profile,” U.S. Energy Information Administration, last updated June 15, 2023, accessed
January 16, 2024, Texas Profile (eia.gov); Matt Egan, “The United States is producing more oil than any country in
history,” CNN Business, December 19, 2023, accessed January 16, 2024, The US is producing more oil than any
country in history | CNN Business.

100
production behind plain or tropical facades. Oil extraction continues hidden in plain sight. The Packard
Well Site, established in 1967, drills for oil behind an ordinary, windowless beige office building on Pico
Boulevard. Just west of the Beverly Center, 54 wells sit behind tall walls and foliage, visible only from the
top of the mall’s parking garage. Students at Beverly Hills High dubbed the 165-foot derrick on their
campus the “Tower of Hope” after children decorated the vinyl, soundproof covering in flowers. This
derrick stopped drilling in 2017.90 But the most famous of these examples are the four THUMS Islands
that sit off the coast of Long Beach.
In 1965, five oil companies formed THUMS, a consortium that built four artificial islands at a cost
of $22 million. Collectively, the four islands cover about 42 acres of land and include 1,000 active wells
which produce 46,000 barrels of oil and 9 million cubic feet of natural gas every day.91 Engineering
advances in drilling technology enabled the islands to counter the Long Beach’s subsidence, but this
work proceeded in view of the city’s waterfront tourist landscape. Theme park architect Joseph Linesch,
who helped landscape Disneyland, designed “creative disguises” to mask the 175-foot derricks and other
structures behind “faux skyscraper skins and waterfalls.” To mitigate noise, the islands run on electricity
while concrete facades further divert industrial noise. Colorful lights illuminate the structures at night.
These tropical facades enabled the oil rigs to “blend in with the surrounding coastal environment.”
LAAPL Education Chair Blake W. E. Barton of Signal Hill Petroleum noted, “Most people simply do not
realize the islands are petroleum production facilities. From the shore, the manmade islands appear
90 Zoie Matthew, “4 Oil Wells Hidden in Plain Sight in L.A.,” Los Angeles Magazine, February 5, 2018, accessed April
20, 2023, 4 Oil Wells Hidden in Plain Sight in L.A. (lamag.com).
91 B. A. Wells and K. L. Wells, “THUMS – California’s Hidden Oil Islands,” American Oil & Gas Historical Society,
March 8, 2018, accessed April 20, 2023, THUMS - California's Hidden Oil Islands - American Oil & Gas Historical
Society (aoghs.org). THUMS is an acronym for the consortium of its five parent companies: Texaco (now Chevron),
Humble (now ExxonMobil), Union Oil (now Chevron), Mobil (now ExxonMobil), and Shell Oil Company.

101
occupied by upscale condos and lush vegetation.” The Los Angeles Times has described the four islands
as “part Disney, part Jetsons, part Swiss Family Robinson.”92
The Spindletop/Gladys City Boomtown Museum, then, might best be described as part
Bicentennial nostalgia for the “good old days,” part Hollywood set design, part Bellagio fountains. No one
method for commemorating and visualizing the nation’s oil legacy dominates. In Southeast Texas, images
of the wooden derrick reign supreme, while in Southern California, modern rigs are masked behind nonindustrial facades. Either way, our collective image of the oil industry has changed with the emergence of
the service economy. Production is still visible to varying degrees, but often historicized through use of
the iconic, turn-of-the-century derrick imagery, or hidden in plain sight. It would be easy to condemn the
direct masking of oil rigs behind tropical facades in Long Beach as the more deceptive of the two
endeavors, but these efforts have also not fabricated a highly selective view of the past couched in the
comfort of heritage tourism. A portrait of Beaumont’s postindustrial heritage site reveals just how
distorted our view of current production can become when viewing the nation’s industrial legacy
through rose-colored, historicized glasses. The sentinels of Spindletop—wooden oil derricks rebuilt for
entertainment purposes—stand watch over a landscape that continues to be drilled at record pace. We
are often just too distracted to notice.
92 Ibid.
Figure 26 – View from East Ocean Boulevard of Island White, one of the four THUMS Islands off
the coast of Long Beach. Photo courtesy of author.

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Chapter 3: Ruined Renaissance: Adventure and Adaptive Reuse in the Minneapolis Mill District
“You can’t knock down the walls! You have to save the walls!” On the cool Friday night of
October 21, 1983, the 104-year-old Crown Roller Mill burned to ruin. Kit Richardson, an architect who
owned the adjacent Standard Mill and the North Star Woolen Mill, knew the federal tax code stipulating
that if 75 percent of the exterior walls remained intact, any rehabilitation could qualify for a 20 percent
investment tax credit. He frantically “grabbed the arm of one of the firemen who was trying to knock
down the walls,” imploring him to find another way to extinguish the flames.1 The fire was reported
around 6:30 p.m. More than 60 firefighters from eight stations throughout the city fought the blaze,
which slowly erupted into an inferno and obscured the downtown skyline. Flames shot 45 feet above the
100-foot building while sparks showered the surrounding ground until around 8:50 p.m., when the upper
portion of the north and west brick walls collapsed into the street.2
Two firefighters entered an enclosed catwalk connecting the Crown Roller to the adjacent
Ceresota Elevator, knocking out its walls to prevent the spread. Hundreds of spectators stood below,
watching the men 100 feet in the air. The fire department suspected arson, reporting that “some
transients had been kicked out of the building about two hours before the fire.”3
Jan Janos, an employee
at the nearby Lock and Dam, also stated that he saw two men enter the building about one hour and
forty-five minutes prior to the initial report of fire. The pair appeared to be wearing expensive outdoor
gear and backpacks. They climbed the north-side fire escape and entered through the third floor. Janos
did not see them leave. The firefighters eventually brought the blaze under control at 11 p.m.4
1 Kit Richardson, interview by Linda Mack, December 17, 2008, transcript, 9-10, Minneapolis Riverfront
Redevelopment Oral History Project, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, MN [hereafter MHS].
2
“Fire,” Minneapolis Star and Tribune, October 22, 1983; Charles Laszewski, “Historic grain mill site burns,” Saint
Paul Pioneer Press, October 22, 1983, in the Buildings: Crown Roller Mill Envelope #1 vertical file, James K. Hosmer
Special Collections, Minneapolis Central Library, Minneapolis, Minnesota [hereafter JHSC].
3
“Fire”; Laszewski, “Historic grain mill site burns.”
4 David Phelps, “Brick walls collapse as fire destroys downtown mill,” Minneapolis Star and Tribune, October 22,
1983, in the Buildings: Crown Roller Mill Envelope #1 vertical file, JHSC.

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What happened to the Crown Roller Mill after its destructive end in 1983, and the influence this
decision had on subsequent tourist developments, is the subject of this chapter. Public officials and
private redevelopers both understood that such vacant properties offered, in the words of David Harvey,
“symbolic capital.”5 Both transient and urban exploration populations, whom passersby recalled seeing
in the leadup to the Crown Roller Mill fire in 1983, had staked dual claims to the abandoned riverfront in
the second half of the twentieth century. This chapter examines the seizure of control over this space by
public and private redevelopers looking to create a residential, commercial, and touristic hub for
downtown Minneapolis. Along the Mississippi riverfront, history became a weapon of the ruling elite to
profit off the city’s past. Key to the Mill District’s value as a tradable commodity was its aesthetic value,
which municipal planners and private developers sought to preserve and crystallize as a historicized,
turn-of-the-century theme which harkened back to the city’s heyday as the flour milling capital of the
world.
5 David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford: Blackwell,
1989), 77.
Figures 27 and 28 – On the left, a view of the Crown Roller’s west elevation, looking east. On the right, a view of the mill
interior. These photos were taken as part of the Historic American Engineering Record’s (HAER) documentation of the 1983
fire, c. mid-1980s. Images courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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The Mill District offered plenty of iconic structures with which the city could brand its nascent
tourist hub. No individual structure, however, could rival the iconicity of “instant ruins” wrought by fires
such as that in 1983 at the Crown Roller Mill. This chapter brings ruins to the forefront of Minneapolis’s
redevelopment efforts. It asks how ruins aestheticized a unique manifestation of “boom” suggestive of
the area’s legacy of danger, adventure, and exploration. As we will see, this danger stemmed from two
periods: the flour milling industry’s heyday when flour-dust explosions posed a constant threat to
workers and the area’s half century of abandonment and dereliction. Ruins of course have long been a
source of debated interpretation. Some viewed their presence as an eyesore needing fixed; others
viewed them as a distinctly American callback to Europe’s romanticized landscape of ruins, lending an
aura of legitimacy and authenticity to the riverfront. The people in charge of redevelopment, whose
voices will populate this chapter, were themselves enthusiastic adventurers of the Mill District in its
derelict days, and in some cases spoke directly to the importance of preserving the ruins to maintain the
sense of adventure from their days of exploration.
This chapter, then, looks at the redeveloper’s divergent treatment of ruins in the preservation of
three unique case studies: the Crown Roller Mill, the Mill City Museum, and Mill Ruins Park. The
preservation and visual display of the “instant ruins” in the latter two case studies specifically created an
industrial aesthetic acknowledging the danger and adventure inherent in the Mill District’s multiple
legacies. Fire-laden destruction galvanized preservation efforts more than once. The iconicity created by
fire-wrought ruins, preserved in a state of romantic decay, became the spearpoint with which public and
private redevelopers reclaimed control of their city’s prime, riverfront real estate. It was through the
creation of an instantly historicized, romanticized, and ruined portrait of Minneapolis’s industrial past
that the city’s riverfront was reborn, in the words of Sharon Zukin, as a “landscape of power.”6
6
Sharon Zukin, Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disneyland (Berkeley: University of California Press).

105
The Flour Milling Capital of the World
Minneapolis thrived as the flour milling capital of the world from 1880 to 1930. The St. Anthony
Falls—the only waterfall along the entirety of the Mississippi—once powered over twenty mills along its
city riverbanks. On the west bank, milling complexes arose along both sides of an underground canal
that ran 22 feet deep and 60 feet wide. Water from the canal powered subterranean turbines within the
mills which in turn operated machinery that often extended five or six stories high. Minneapolis at the
turn of the century featured one of the country’s largest agglomerations of industrial works. The city’s
milling industry gave rise to consumer giants General Mills and Pillsbury, both of which gradually
purchased and consolidated the variety of mills along the west and east banks of the Mississippi,
respectively. Ancillary industries sprang up to support the milling operations, including bag and barrel
works, iron works, and an extensive array of rail lines. Railcars shipped products to the port of Duluth on
Lake Superior, or along thousands of miles of track to eastern markets. Minneapolis’s population swelled
from just over 13,000 in 1879 to nearly 165,000 by 1890. In 1880, the Minneapolis Mill District
generated over two million barrels of flour annually.7
7
“Mills District Plan,” January 1983, Minneapolis City Planning Department, Office of the City Coordinator, 1,
Minneapolis Central Library Stacks, Minneapolis, MN; “Mill City Museum Press Kit,” c. 2003, in the Museums: Mill
City Museum vertical file, JHSC.
Figure 29 – View of the Washburn “A” Mill (center right) and associated complex,
c. 1948. Photo courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.

106
During the milling industry’s heyday, fire created a dynamic and ever-changing landscape, with
industrial magnates building and rebuilding structures (with surprising frequency) as they exploded or
burned down. On May 2, 1878, Minneapolis had its first taste of the explosive risks that came with flour
milling. Just four years after Cadwallader C. Washburn had built the Washburn “A” Mill in 1874, a spark in
the mill’s basement ignited a flour-dust explosion that sent shockwaves through the city. William C.
Edgar, editor of the Northwestern Miller trade journal, reported, “The roof of the Washburn A Mill rose
hundreds of feet into the air, followed instantly by a sheet of flame.” The building exploded, transforming
walls six feet thick at its base into rubble.8 Wind-swept flames crossing the canal caught nearby mills in
their path, igniting a quick succession of new explosions. Falling stones, roof shingles, and timber rained
devastation upon the surrounding landscape. The initial shockwave shattered plate-glass windows as far
as St. Paul’s Summit Avenue. Nationwide media coverage informed the public that the explosion had
killed 18 men and destroyed five adjacent mills. In the span of a few hours, half of Minneapolis’s flour
milling capacity had been eliminated.9
Washburn, of course, rebuilt bigger and better than before. The
1878 Washburn “A” Mill explosion was to be the first of numerous fires that would plague the
Minneapolis mill district and its workers in the ensuing decades. The “A” Mill itself would again burn
down in 1928, and not for the last time in its history.
By 1930, Buffalo had displaced Minneapolis as the epicenter of flour production, taking
advantage of new tariff regulations on Canadian wheat, its more direct involvement in Great Lakes
8
Shannon M. Pennefeather, ed., Mill City: A Visual History of the Minneapolis Mill District (St. Paul: Minnesota
Historical Society Press, 2003), 100-105; Joseph Hart, “The Minneapolis That Time Forgot,” City Pages, Vol. 18, no.
862 (June 11, 1997): 16-22, in the Parks: Mill Ruins Park vertical file, JHSC; Tom Balcom, “City Shook from Center to
Circumference,” Southside Journal (November 1983), in the Business Firms: Washburn Crosby Milling Co.: 1878
Mill Explosion vertical file, JHSC.
9 Balcom, “City Shook from Center to Circumference.” John Stilgoe writes that one of the primary reasons
corporations began suburbanizing industrial activity around the turn of the twentieth century was to take
advantage of the fire prevention methods more spacious surroundings offered. One-story, sprawling factories in
the suburbs were not just considered more efficient than the multi-story, elevator-operated structures along
waterfronts, they were also safer. See John Stilgoe, “Moulding the Industrial Zone Aesthetic: 1880-1929,” Journal
of American Studies, vol. 16, no. 1 (April 1982): 9-10.

107
shipping networks, and its closer proximity to eastern markets. Around Minneapolis, the flour milling
industry began to decentralize away from the riverfront around mid-century. One of the most prominent
complexes on the Mississippi’s west bank was that of the Washburn Crosby Company, one of the largest
and most technologically advanced flour mills in the world at the time of its construction in 1874.
Activity in the flagship Washburn “A” Mill gave rise to both Gold Medal Flour and Betty Crocker—brands
that would become staples in American kitchens. General Mills, Inc. formed in 1928 through a merger of
Washburn Crosby Company and four other mills. General Mills played an integral role in moving
production away from the Minneapolis riverfront and diversifying its product line to include cake mix,
chemicals, soybean processing, and plastic balloons, to name a few.10
Downtown flour milling stood on its last legs by midcentury. In 1958, General Mills relocated its
headquarters to Golden Valley, Minnesota. The multi-million-dollar aluminum and glass-sided building
covered 1.7 acres of a 40-acre site—a suburban oasis geographically and aesthetically removed from the
heavy industrial downtown riverfront.11 In June 1965, General Mills announced that it was closing the
Washburn “A” Mill for good, along with eight other mills in the ensuing eight months. That same year,
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed its St. Anthony Falls Upper Lock, which closed off the supply
of water power to the mill.12
Only a handful of industries remained in operation in the 1960s and 1970s.
The decline of industrial activity along the riverfront paralleled national calls for urban renewal of
10 David Lee, “General Mills to Show New Building with Plenty of Room to Grow In,” Minneapolis Tribune, June 1,
1958, in the MPLS: General Mills, Inc. (1940-1959) vertical file, JHSC.
11 “Building Center is Open Courtyard,” Star Tribune, June 21, 1958, Accession M/A 0334.019, Box 19, Folder
S004590-S004594, Star Tribune Collection – Photographs S004500-S004744, JHSC. The company’s relocation to
Golden Valley represents a prime example of the mid-century “post-industrial aesthetic” Steven High describes.
After World War II, planners incorporated “environmental values into factory exteriors, by removing the factory
from its former industrial landscape and placing it in ‘natural’ surroundings.” See Steven High, Industrial Sunset:
The Making of North America’s Rust Belt, 1969-1984 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 74-75.
12 “Decision of the Century… and the Working Riverfront,” in the City Planning & Renewal: MPLS: Riverfront
Development: West Side Mills District vertical file, JHSC. The Lower Lock, completed two years earlier, ironically
made it possible to ship grain out of the elevators by barge. General Mills thus continued to operate grain
elevators downtown despite a more widespread move inland.

108
downtowns. Adaptive reuse of abandoned structures breathed new life into derelict areas. A key
element in this drive was James Rouse’s festival marketplace formula, marrying private development and
preservation in the creation of historic, themed atmospheres in which commerce reigned supreme.
Historic sites such as Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, Faneuil Hall in Boston, and New York’s South Street
Seaport became “emporia of mass consumption.”13 Private developers and municipalities alike realized
there was money to be made in historic preservation.
Early projects along the riverfront’s west side brought patrons to the area but failed to generate
momentum beyond their establishments. In 1968, Reiko Weston opened Fuji-Ya, a Japanese restaurant
built above the ruins of the former Bassett lumber mill and Columbia flour mill. James Howe opened the
First Street Station restaurant in 1975 within the former Minneapolis Eastern Railway engine house—the
first adaptive reuse of any structure on the west side. More ambitious developments unfolded on the
east bank, where Peter Nelson Hall renovated an 1890s saloon into Pracna on Main in 1973 and Louis
Zelle launched St. Anthony Main, a festival marketplace, in the late 1970s. Much of this early
development, if fragmented, came after the St. Anthony Falls Historic District was named to the National
Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1971, officially protecting the buildings. The Clean Water Act in 1972
also encouraged the city to regulate pollutants dumped into the Mississippi, slowly transforming the
river from a sewage dump into an appealing destination.14 Amidst these scattered preservation efforts, a
13 Zukin, Landscapes of Power, 51-53. See also, Alison Isenberg, Downtown America: A History of the Place and the
People Who Made It (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). For more on James Rouse and the festival
marketplace movement, see Nicholas Dagen Bloom, Merchant of Illusion: James Rouse, America’s Salesman of the
Businessman’s Utopia (Columbus: Ohio State University, 2016). For a scathing critique of the festival marketplace
formula, see M. Christine Boyer, “Cities for Sale: Merchandising History at South Street Seaport,” in Variations on a
Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space, ed. Michael Sorkin (New York: Hill & Wang,
1992), 181-204. Boyer writes that these spaces, unable to hold onto their unique flavor amidst global capital
investment, become “true nonplaces, hollowed out urban remnants, without connection to the rest of the city or
the past, waiting to be… turned into spectacles of consumption.” Rouse’s festival marketplaces “attempt to restore
an intactness that never was… [and in doing so have] so conflated geographical space and historical time that the
actual uniqueness of place and context have been completely erased” (191, 200).
14 Pennefeather, Mill City, 130. Another element of the environmental cleanup included extensive incineration
and/or encapsulation of coal-tar wastes containing traces of lead, arsenic, mercury, cadmium, and cyanide along

109
different world emerged. Fire again remained a threat, but for different reasons. It is to this era of
dereliction and danger that we now turn.
The Abandoned Riverfront
From the 1930s to the 1970s, the Mill District fell into a gradual state of ruin. Economic
obsolescence set in as one mill after another shut down their operations. The city filled the canal that
ran under South 1st Street with sand and gravel after completion of the locks and dam in the 1960s.
Many mills were razed or buried, while other structures lay vacant through the ensuing decades.15 The
Washburn “A” Mill, journalist Joseph Hart wrote, exhibited an “architecture of decay: window frames
seem hung independent of mortar, stairways rise to nowhere. A sink has grown saplings. Floors have
sprouted carpets of moss. Pigeons wheel in and out of the ruin.”16 These birds were not the only
creatures scurrying throughout the abandoned buildings.
People too, allured by the mystery, danger, and sense of exploration, found their way into the
derelict structures. The Stone Arch Bridge, completed in 1883 and spanning the Mississippi River,
featured prominently in preservationists’ recollections of their days exploring the abandoned riverfront.
The last passenger train crossed the bridge in March 1978. The city eventually reopened it as a pathway
for pedestrians and cyclists on October 31, 1994.17 The intervening sixteen years, however, bore witness
to numerous adventurers crossing its surface. Both Nina Archabal, Director and State Historic
the riverfront. Minnegasco operated a coal gasification plant a mile upstream from the west side milling district
from the 1870s through the 1950s. The presence of contaminated soil heavily deterred the development and
lending communities from investing in the mill district for many years. See Bob Eleff, “Contaminated waste
discovered on riverfront,” Surveyor (June 1990): 5; Tom Meersman, “Digging up a new riverside,” Star Tribune,
March 21, 1996, in the Parkways: Great River Road vertical file, JHSC.
15 Steve Brandt, “Reclaiming Mill City’s River Roots,” Star Tribune, December 18, 1996, in the Parks: Mill Ruins Park
vertical file, JHSC.
16 Hart,” The Minneapolis That Time Forgot.”
17 “Stone Arch Bridge Facts and Figures,” Skyway News, November 8, 1994, in the Bridge: Stone Arch Railroad
Bridge Envelope #2 vertical file, JHSC. The American Society of Civil Engineers designated the Stone Arch Bridge (of
the Burlington Northern Railroad) a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1975.

110
Preservation Officer of the Minnesota Historical Society [MHS], and Kathleen O’Brien, City Coordinator
for the City of Minneapolis, reflected on their times traversing the Stone Arch Bridge in its dormant
years. Archabal reminisced that “you could only gain access to it illegally—which I did on a number of
occasions. You just had to get down on your back and kind of do backwards scooching and you could get
onto the bridge and walk it.18 O’Brien also affirmed that “we used to crawl through the chain link fence
to walk across it.” Before it was paved for pedestrians, “It was just all real big stones… it was fun,” she
recalled.19 Robert Roscoe, a member of the Heritage Preservation Commission in the 1980s,
remembered that the first time he went across the bridge he and his friends “had to run as fast as we
could… and scramble off” as a train approached. “We did it at night just kind of like daring to do it.”20
Architect Thomas Meyer, who would go on to design the Mill City Museum, represented perhaps
the most daring urban explorer of his cadre who would develop a passion for the Minneapolis riverfront
during its derelict years. He began his exploration of the abandoned district during his days as an
architecture student at the University of Minnesota, just downstream from the Mill District. “We had the
place to ourselves—the bridges, the waterfalls, the buildings,” said Meyer. “It was a fabulous
playground.” After graduating in 1972, Meyer and a fellow architect set up a small office in an old mill
dating to 1900, still filled with original machinery. At lunch time each day, Meyer recalled wandering
through the deserted building while eating his sandwiches.21 He felt drawn to the riverfront precisely
“because no one else seemed to discover it.” Part of the allure stemmed from the “sense of being kind of
an explorer.” He acknowledged the area had an edge, with homeless people and precipitous drop-offs,
18 Nina Archabal, interview by Linda Mack, January 6, 2009, transcript, 1-2, Minneapolis Riverfront Redevelopment
Oral History Project, MHS.
19 Kathleen O’Brien, interview by Linda Mack, January 8, 2009, transcript, 1-2, Minneapolis Riverfront
Redevelopment Oral History Project, MHS.
20 Robert Roscoe, interview by Linda Mack, December 15, 2008, 10, Minneapolis Riverfront Redevelopment Oral
History Project, MHS.
21 For his architecture thesis, Meyer designed an imaginary Museum of St. Anthony Falls in front of the Pillsbury
“A” Mill on the east bank. Martha Coventry, “Historical Recollection: Minneapolis Gets a New Milling Museum,”
Minnesota Alumni Magazine (Fall 2003), in the Museums: Mill City Museum vertical file, JHSC.

111
but this sense of danger added to the appeal. “The place was really unprotected, undiscovered,” he
recalled.
With my friends, we were fearless. This was sort of a regular recreation. It was free. We didn’t
have a lot of money as college students. We’d sometimes take food, sometimes take beer,
sometimes just go down, on evenings typically, and explore the riverfront from the University on
up to Hennepin Avenue. It was always sort of an adventure to find new things. We’d go back to
certain places over and over again.22
The power of this ruined place spoke to Meyer. He had liked architecture well enough in college, but felt
abstract site plans and photographic slides never fully captured his imagination. “Here I was on the river
with bridges and ruined buildings and big massive structures, all this tangible stuff,” Meyer stated. “I
really felt an enthusiasm for it,” and found a “personal way to connect with what architecture can be.”23
The Washburn “A” Mill served as a particularly memorable site for Meyer to visit. He spent much
time in the adjacent Utility Building, which comprised part of the massive complex. The millers, he felt,
seemed to have believed General Mills would restart operations a few weeks after closing. “There were
still calendars on the walls… shoes in the lockers.” The company had left all the machinery intact and in
perfect working order. “Nothing had been removed or salvaged,” including an entire floor of these
“beautiful wooden machines with the belts in place and wheels.” Meyer remembers the unique quality
of light shining through the windows. Extant flour dust on the windows had yellowed over time, “so
you’d get this yellow light coming through in this yellow environment.” The limestone further blended
with the golden wood of the machines, creating a distinct aura. He spent many days exploring the
building’s nooks and crannies alone, with colleagues, and with students. “We’d just kind of explore,” he
reflected, “get up on the roof and go to different corners.”24 Tom Meyer and his fellow preservationists
22 Thomas Meyer, interview by Linda Mack, June 17, 2008, transcript, 1-4, Minneapolis Riverfront Redevelopment
Oral History Project, MHS.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid., 6.

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who would recreate the Mill District served as many of its first urban explorers, although the term did
not fully exist in their time.
This impulse to explore, as these soon-to-be preservationists exhibited in their relative youth of
the 1970s, sheds light on the nascent subculture of urban exploration. The practice involves the
exploration of manmade structures and typically involves some sort of photography or documentation of
the urban environments. Curious people have been exploring ruins for centuries, but the advent of the
internet and online discussion forums in the late twentieth century created a shared, digital space in
which urban explorers from across the world could convene to share their adventures—or “travel
narratives”—into abandoned spaces. Scholarship on urban exploration is somewhat limited, given the
relative recency of it as a defined practice. In Corporate Wasteland: The Landscape and Memory of
Deindustrialization, Steven High argues that “nostalgia takes a back seat to the thrill of transgression,”
for the early urban explorers were mainly white, middle-class youth embedded within a broader youth
culture that enjoyed raves and graffiti art in the late twentieth century.25
In High’s analysis of some of these online forums—including that of the practice’s forerunner,
Toronto-based Ninjalicious—he highlights language of the sublime.26 A sense of exploration and
conquest govern their movement. Even if only traveling ten minutes to get to an abandoned factory, the
urban explorers present their travels as if they are transported through space and time to a distant,
transgressive space. In other words, they “may not have traveled great physical distances, but they have
traveled great social distances,” High contends, not unlike middle- and upper-class “slumming” in
25 Steven High and David W. Lewis, Corporate Wasteland: The Landscape and Memory of Deindustrialization
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), 63.
26 Urban explorers use nicknames on their online boards. For an ethnographic look at urban explorers across North
America and Europe, see Urban Explorers: Into the Darkness, directed by Melody Gilbert (Frozen Feet Films, 2007),
1:25:28, Urban Explorers: Into the Darkness_Documentary by Melody Gilbert on Vimeo. The website Infiltration,
founded by Ninjalicious, documents a history of urban exploration and many of his adventures: Infiltration. See
also, Welcome to the Urban Exploration Resource! - Urban Exploration Resource (uer.ca), accessed July 5, 2023.

113
working-class neighborhoods around the turn of the century.27 Urban explorers justify their actions by
claiming to document history before it disappears. The reality, however, appears to be that they place
much greater value on aesthetics than history. They “sacralize abandoned mills and factories as ‘ruins’”
through ignorance of the sites’ socioeconomic history, saying “very little about the history, function, and
physical layout of the mills being explored.”28
Since urban exploration arose as an internet-driven subculture, Minneapolis has served as one of
its premiere destinations, with many universities and colleges near industrial sites. A group of students
led by Max Action formed the online group “Action Squad” on the University of Minnesota’s campus in
late 1996 to document their missions into Minneapolis’s underground and abandoned spaces. The
group’s motivations, per its website, derive (with a slight air of sarcasm) from “seeing Goonies and the
Indiana Jones movies too many times at too impressionable of an age.” Among the group’s bullet-point
raison d’être are “the sense of adventure inherent in not knowing what lies ahead” and “the thrill of
being where you’re not supposed to be.” Appreciating the subculture, Action Squad writes, “requires a
well-developed sense of wonder, a powerful curiosity, a juiced-up imagination, and a taste for
adventure.” Their website includes photos and trip reports from myriad missions throughout the Twin
Cities.29 If High’s derisive analysis of urban explorers’ preference for adventure over accurate history
rings true, it passes judgment in a way with which the adventurers themselves would likely agree. Most
understand the illicit nature of their activities and accept the risks of getting caught or seriously injured.
27 High, Corporate Wasteland, 58. Sherry Lee Linkon also covers the growth of “ruin porn” including websites,
blogs, and documentaries that fetishize life and exploration within abandoned spaces. See chapter 3 of Sherry Lee
Linkon, The Half-Life of Deindustrialization: Working-Class Writing about Economic Restructuring (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2018).
28 High, Corporate Wasteland, 49, 54-55. What little history Ninjalicious included in his posts was often inaccurate.
29 “General Info” page and “Missions: Urban Ruins” page—Action Squad - Minneapolis Urban Adventurers,
accessed July 5, 2023.

114
Although some do suggest they are documenting and thus preserving forgotten history, most
acknowledge their drive stems from a simple truth: it is fun.
This enjoyment does not come without danger, however. In 2004, three teenagers died from
carbon monoxide poisoning while illegally exploring the Wabasha Street Caves in St. Paul—a longtime
site of exploration that has left numerous dead from poisoning, fire, drowning, and collapses over the
years.30 Minneapolis urban explorers again reached local headlines in June 2015 after two incidents left
one person severely injured, and another dead. 22-year-old Luke Kutsch was exploring the closed Fruen
Mill with two friends near his home in Bryn Mawr when he plummeted 100 feet in the grain elevator.
Kutsch suffered a broken femur and pelvis, and a jaw cracked in six places. The mill, closed since the
1970s, has developed an infamous reputation as the most dangerous building in the entire state, given
the high number of incidents there, including one fatality.31 Kutsch fared better than Emily Rowland, a
student who fell to her death three weeks earlier from Bunge Tower, an abandoned grain elevator just
off the University of Minnesota’s campus. There have been at least a dozen similar incidents reported at
city mills and elevators since 1979, although officials believe many more have gone unreported.32
Urban explorers were not the only patrons of the abandoned riverfront. A more sizable
population of squatters made their homes inside the vacant mills and elevators along the Mississippi. Kit
Richardson, co-founder of the Minneapolis-based design firm Architectural Associates, Inc., noted that
30 Paola Farer, “Three teens die of carbon monoxide in cave along Mississippi at St. Paul; fourth hospitalized,”
9News, April 28, 2004, accessed July 5, 2023, Three teens die of carbon monoxide in cave along Mississippi at St.
Paul; fourth hospitalized | 9news.com.
31 Natalie Daher, “Urban exploring—often illegal and dangerous—is being fueled by social media in Twin Cities,”
Star Tribune, July 20, 2015, accessed July 5, 2023, Urban exploring — often illegal and dangerous — is being fueled
by social media in Twin Cities (startribune.com); Andy Gott, “Inside Minnesota’s Most Dangerous Abandoned
Building,” KXRB, November 5, 2022, accessed July 5, 2023, Inside Minnesota's Most Dangerous Abandoned
Building (kxrb.com); Dan Marshall, “Embracing Ruins as Historic Preservation,” Streets.mn, June 10, 2021, accessed
July 5, 2023, Embracing Ruins as Historic Preservation - Streets.mn.
32 Daher, “Urban exploring—often illegal and dangerous”; “Minneapolis urban explorer injured in 4-story fall at
abandoned Fruen Mill,” FOX 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul, June 26, 2015, accessed July 5, 2023, Minneapolis urban
explorer injured in 4-story fall at abandoned Fruen Mill (fox9.com).

115
the police in the 1970s and 1980s were telling homeless people not to sleep along Nicolet Avenue, but
rather to relocate to the riverfront because “no one would mind if they slept in the [abandoned]
buildings.”33 Scott Anfinson, archaeologist with the MHS, described the district in these years as a “noman’s land.” When they were conducting archaeological digs, Anfinson and his colleagues “would
constantly scare out homeless men that were underneath the Hennepin Avenue Bridge or in the tunnels
down at the mill district.” The men would “come out of nowhere,” Anfinson recalled, “You’d be digging,
and, all of [a] sudden, somebody would be standing next to you. They were just coming out of these
holes in the walls all over down there.” Anfinson reflected that “it was kind of spooky in a way, but they
never threatened us or anything.”34
David Wiggins, riverfront program manager for the MHS,” acknowledged that “there was still a
considerable population there.” Architect Peter Nelson Hall remembered a gray-haired fellow on the east
bank known as the “Philosopher.” The Philosopher was known to buy alcohol from Surdyk’s Liquor with
his cashed Social Security checks. He would take his booze and “go into the tunnels near Pracna and just
sleep… live there.” Hall thought “he was probably killed for his money.”35 On the west bank, the Stone
Arch Bridge was a frequent hangout, but most people lived in the General Mills Elevators No. 2 and 3,
downstream from the Washburn complex. Wiggins estimated that at one time there were roughly 120
people in these structures. The city finally demolished them after a brutal rape-murder incident in 1997
involving vagrants. Many then moved into the tunnel systems and lived in the mill raceways
underground.36
33 Kit Richardson, interview by Linda Mack, 8.
34 Scott Anfinson, interview by Linda Mack, November 25, 2008, transcript, 8-9, Minneapolis Riverfront
Redevelopment Oral History Project, MHS.
35 Peter Nelson Hall, interview by Linda Mack, February 28, 2009, transcript, 4, Minneapolis Riverfront
Redevelopment Oral History Project, MHS.
36 David Wiggins, interview by Linda Mack, March 5, 2009, transcript, 4-6, Minneapolis Riverfront Redevelopment
Oral History Project, MHS; Steve Brandt, “Rolling on the riverfront,” Star Tribune, April 26, 1998, in the Parks: Mill
Ruins Park vertical file, JHSC.

116
Wiggins and his colleagues recognized the problem for incoming public and private developers
looking to revitalize the area through adaptive reuse. He struck up a conversation with some of the
homeless, whom he acknowledged had “been there long before the tourists were coming.” Wiggins cut a
deal with them, stating that if they kept their spaces clean, and did not bother the public, then he, as the
riverfront supervisor overseeing much of the transition, would not call the cops. There was one
conversation with a man who went by the name “Viking” that Wiggins particularly remembered. Viking
was “a character, kind of scary looking, a big red beard, a Vietnam vet, a pretty smart guy,” he recalled.
Viking had become something of a warlord on the west bank, shaking down the local homeless for their
money and then buying them all malt liquor. Wiggins, who had “a couple of powwows” with the man,
noted that he “appreciated the honesty” and “stuck to the terms of the deal.”37 If figures such as the
Philosopher and Viking opened preservationists’ eyes to the dangers of transient living, the risks
remained all too real for many of the homeless themselves.
JobyLynn Sassily-James spent time squatting in and around the Washburn “A” Mill in the 1990s.
Her reflections on this time reveal the constant state of worry many shared about the dangers of fellow
“tribes” and the vacant structures in which they eked out an existence. Sassily-James and her tribe used
to get lost in the underground tunnels connecting the Washburn complex’s four buildings. “It was pitch
black even on the brightest day” she remembered,” but cool enough in the summer. Her tribe stopped
frequenting the tunnel system, however, when they encountered another tribe’s belongings, which
elicited a “sinking feeling in the pit of [her] stomach” sensing the potential for conflict. Her tribe
eventually found a “good spot and had to fight hard to keep it.” In her world, tagging structures (with
spray paint) signified more than destruction of property. This act marked one’s territory.38
37 David Wiggins, interview by Linda Mack, 4-6.
38 Homeless in the Mill Exhibit, Mill City Museum, Minneapolis MN, viewed by author in December 2021.

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Sassily-James, now an artist and photographer, captured several photos from her time in the
Washburn complex. One photo depicted a giant hole in the floor, which caused many close calls. These
open spaces in tall buildings were the biggest drawback, especially if you were chased. After her friend’s
dog fell to its death, they covered the space with burlap bags and straw “so if any other squatters came
in during the night to harm us they would fall down.” Not all moments were dire. One photograph
depicted a view of the Metrodome through a huge open door on an upper level, which Sassily-James
and her tribe would sit on the edge of “with our feet dangling below drinking stolen 40s of Mickey’s
[malt liquor].” When they were drunk, they would “swing out through the doorway” on a suspended
metal cord with a large hook at the end.39 One of Sassily-James’s friends, Ellf, informed her of the city’s
plan to tear down and renovate the mill. Eventually, Neo-Nazi skinheads took over the North building. A
slew of murders and a rape further convinced many that the complex was “no longer the safest squat in
town.”40 Sassily-James’s testimony reveals a stark distinction between the various groups populating the
riverfront. For incoming preservationists, the homeless and occasional urban explorer represented
nuisances that might hinder their redevelopment efforts. For urban explorers, while their adventures
brought risk, these very risks signified part of the fun. The homeless living in the Mill District risked life
and death on a daily basis.
If these stories of violence perhaps convinced local officials that their redevelopment efforts
were warranted, they were not the impetus. Public and private developers alike realized the profit to be
had from reclaiming the riverfront. Plenty of scholarship has documented the profit motive underlying
calls for urban renewal from the 1940s through the 1970s in cities across the United States. Slum
clearance and the removal of “blighted” neighborhoods ostensibly “improved” the urban landscape, but
rarely were profits lacking in this process. Richardson’s recollection of police urging the homeless
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid.

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population to relocate from the well-trodden Nicolet Avenue to the vacant mills reminds us that there is
often a human toll involved in redevelopment. Even if not as dramatic as contemporary urban renewal
efforts, which demolished entire neighborhoods to make way for new construction projects, the
redevelopment of the Mill District still uprooted those living in these spaces.
Geographer David Harvey believed the roots of urban inequality rested in the “scarcity and
consequent value of well-situated land.”41 Water had long functioned as a source of energy for industry.
By the late twentieth century, this was no longer the case. Redevelopers in Minneapolis and countless
other waterfront cities quickly realized the sensory appeal and financial potential of real estate along
waterways for nonindustrial purposes. Just as the Minneapolis police ushered the local homeless
population out of sight and into abandoned structures decades before, redevelopers again shooed away
these very same people once the Mill District became the center of attention. Whether urban renewal,
gentrification, or the preservation of historic districts, these redevelopment efforts, in the words of
Harvey, “merely move the poverty around.”42 Rather than demolish and build anew, however,
redevelopers sought profit through preserving the past. Creating an appealing and coherent theme
around which myriad preservation efforts could congeal quickly became a matter of importance.
Articulating an Industrial Theme
No single masterplan for Minneapolis’s riverfront redevelopment exists. Countless documents
emerged as the process, and those spearheading the efforts, evolved over time. The Mills District Plan,
published by the Minneapolis City Planning Department in January 1983, was one such document. It
articulated an aesthetic theme for public and private developers to follow in order to create visual
consistency across the entirety of the district. “The overall theme for the project,” the plan stated, “…will
41 Sharon Zukin, “David Harvey on Cities,” in David Harvey: A Critical Reader, eds. Noel Castree and Derek Gregory
(Newark: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), 103.
42 David Harvey, Social Justice and the City (1973; Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1988), 143.

119
have its existing building renovated and new buildings designed to create a turn-of-the-century enclave
within the central city.”43 All new landscape elements should be derived from the district’s turn-of-thecentury era, the plan recommended, and “a common palette of quality materials and methods of
installation” should be developed across projects to “provide visual consistency between the various
public and private improvements thus avoiding a hodge-podge image.”44
This visual consistency, when examined through the lens of David Harvey’s critical geography,
gave redevelopers the symbolic capital necessary to market their cities in myriad ways, whether
residential, commercial, recreational, or touristic. Historic preservation and adaptive reuse efforts
coincided with a rise in postmodern architecture. The management of a historic, turn-of-the-century
image for a resurgent Mill District offered, in the words of Harvey, “a façade, a stage set, a fragment” of
the past with which to work.45 The retreat to local history became a conceptual tool with which city
officials could obscure more pressing social issues of the day—namely, the eradication of the homeless
population from prime real estate territory. Profit became a noble enterprise, buttressed by claims that
Minnesota was saving its past. “The production of these spaces,” Sharon Zukin writes, “dramatized an
image of place in the face of a drastic decomposition of local labor markets and bases of social
solidarity.”46 This breakdown was exacerbated in Minneapolis by successive waves of mill shutdowns in
the second half of the twentieth century. What remained to paper over this socioeconomic turmoil was
a highly marketable and historicized image of industry. This image, Harvey contends, gave cities such as
Minneapolis the symbolic capital necessary to attract investors, consumers, and residents to its new
43 “Mills District Plan,” January 1983, ii.
44 Ibid., 15.
45 Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 95. See also the work of Henri Lefebvre, particularly in The Production
of Space (1974).
46 Zukin, “David Harvey on Cities,” 114.

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riverfront.47 The Mill District’s design and architecture, if managed properly, “could become the city’s
trademark or brand” that made it distinctive amidst a growing field of redeveloped waterfronts.48
Redevelopers could capture this turn-of-the-century theme in renovation of old structures, or in
the creation of new structures, by adhering to a number of architectural regulations laid out in the City
Planning Department’s “Central Riverfront Urban Design Guidelines,” published in December 1981. All
exterior changes to buildings required submission to the Heritage Preservation Commission (HPC) for
approval. In addition to height restrictions, new buildings should have flat roofs, be constructed of brick,
concrete, or stone, and draw from the color palette of existing structures. “The primary surfaces of new
buildings,” the guidelines listed, “should be deep red, brown, or buff” with trim in “subdued earth tones
or flat black.”49 By combining just two city reports from 1981 and 1983, we see concerted attempts to
generate a turn-of-the-century industrial theme for old and new buildings alike. In February 1983, the
city announced an ambitious $250 million plan to revitalize the west bank mills, following months of
negotiations between city planners and Mill District Associates, a group of private property owners from
the area.50 But in October, the state of the Crown Roller Mill—what many considered to be the
architectural jewel of the Mill District—took a dramatic turn for the worse.
Crown Roller Mill
In the weeks following the 1983 fire at the Crown Roller Mill, debate raged on what to do with
the smoldering shell. It was one of only four extant flour mills still standing in the district and had been
named to the NRHP in 1971. Demolition for new development made sense, but many opposed it on
47 Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 89-92.
48 Zukin, “David Harvey on Cities,” 116-117.
49 “Central Riverfront Urban Design Guidelines,” City of Minneapolis Office of the Mayor and City Planning
Department, December 1981, 58, in the City Planning & Renewal: Central Riverfront vertical file, JHSC.
50 Jacqui Banaszynksi, “$250-million mills area renewal unveiled,” Star Tribune, February 11, 1983, Accession
149.I.18.8, Box 28, Folder “Standard Mill,” Donald N. Gregg Flour Milling Collection, Gale Family Library, MHS
[hereafter GFL].

121
these grounds. Despite the mill’s ruined presence as an eyesore and safety hazard, the Minneapolis City
Council voted to spend roughly $195,000 to brace and stabilize the walls, buying time for discourse on
how best to preserve what remained of the historic structure.51 The Crown Roller Mill had never been an
ordinary flour mill, which were typically designed in plain, utilitarian fashion. Completed in 1880, the mill
featured a copper-clad mansard roof, segmental arch windows, a date-and-name plaque, and six stories
of cream-colored brick with a stone foundation. The mill commanded the highest spot in the
neighborhood and served as the crown jewel of the Mill District. The city and private developers
eventually agreed to return the mill to its former glory. Standard Milling had replaced the mansard roof
with a one-story brick addition in 1944, and production had stopped on June 30, 1953, when it became a
warehouse.52 What had burned in 1983, in other words, had undergone drastic aesthetic simplifications
and reductions from its nineteenth-century origins.
The Hayber Development Group began work on the building in 1986. While removing the firetwisted wreckage from the Crown’s interior, workers unearthed two vertical S. Morgan Smith water
turbines that were still in place 35 feet below the basement. Hayber removed one turbine for donation
to the MHS collections, and preserved the other in place.53 In 1987, Hayber began constructing a ninestory steel structure inside the former mill around a central atrium. The group also constructed a new
copper-clad mansard roof, cleaned the old brickwork, and matched new brickwork to its original creamy
beige appearance. The Crown’s original mansard roof, Tom DeAngelo of Architectural Alliance explained,
expressed an “awareness that Minneapolis was the largest flour milling center in the world at that [the
51 Randy Furst, “City spends $195,000 in upkeep of Crown Mill,” Star Tribune, July 25, 1984; Dennis Cassano,
“Compromise on mill saves part for now,” Star Tribune, October 29, 1983, in the Buildings: Crown Roller Mill
Envelope #1 vertical file, JHSC. City Inspections Director Sol Jacobs noted that the lowest bid he received for
demolition was $158,000. While cheaper than stabilization, the difference was slim enough to justify preservation.
52 “Crown Roller Mill,” Downtown Minneapolis Neighborhood Association, accessed July 6, 2023, Crown Roller Mill
- The DMNA.
53 Jeffrey A. Hess, “Crown Mill Turbine Recovered,” Preservation Matters, Vol. 2, no. 5 (May 1986), in the Buildings:
Crown Roller Mill Envelope #1 vertical file, JHSC.

122
turn of the century]. They were trying to do something special. So we felt it was important to include
that as part of the restoration” despite the fact that it had not existed since 1944.
54 Inside, the Crown
featured a two-story lobby with a grand staircase next to a two-story waterfall, and a marble and walnut
atrium. Steve Reiland, a CitySide partner, stated, “We spent more money than if we’d built a totally new
building.” Redevelopment also included the attached two-story boiler house, dubbed the Crown Plaza.
Both structures opened as office space in April 1988.55
Renovation of the Crown Roller Mill unfolded alongside redevelopment of two additional
buildings, which collectively comprised the Mill District’s Block 10, or the “Whitney Block.” Hayber
transformed the 1879-built Standard Mill into the Whitney Hotel in 1987.56 The “Million Bushel”
Ceresota Elevator, initially designed for cleaning and storage of grain which it supplied to the adjacent
54 Jonathan Kalstrom, “Crown Mill Renovation Nears Completion,” Lake Area Review, December 1987, in the
Buildings: Crown Roller Mill Envelope #1 vertical file, JHSC. The mansard roof had originally been removed in 1944.
55 Ann K. Ryan, “A growing neighborhood: Offices build up Whitney Block,” Skyway News, May 3, 1988;
“Minneapolis builders, renovators busy along Mississippi this spring,” Star Tribune, April 18, 1988, in the MPLS:
Great River Road vertical file, JHSC.
56 Lucile M. Kane, The Falls of St. Anthony: The Waterfall that Built Minneapolis (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical
Society, 2003), 193; R. T. Rybak, “Standard Mill about to become a posh hotel on city’s riverfront,” Minneapolis
Star and Tribune, September 10, 1985, Accession 149.I.18.8, Box 28, Folder “Standard Mill,” Donald N. Gregg Flour
Milling Collection, GFL. In 2007, the building was converted into private condominiums.
Figures 30 and 31 – On the left, a view of the nine-story steel structure rising within the burned-out hull during
construction, c. 1987. On the right, a photo of the finished Crown Roller Mill, c. 2022. Photo on the left courtesy of
Brian Peterson, Star Tribune. Photo on the right courtesy of author.

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two mills, also received significant redevelopment. Hayber tore apart 64 90-foot silos housed within the
structure and added floors and a seven-story, skylit marble atrium.57 The windowless south wall proved a
major challenge for redevelopers, who added mirroring and a waterfall on the inside and restored the
original Ceresota Elevator sign stretching across the top two floors on the outside. The Ceresota Building
also opened in 1988.58
Collectively, the three structures comprising the Whitney Block represent an early example of
adaptive reuse in the Mill District. The conversion of these structures, many believe, helped kickstart the
Mill District’s renaissance. This process, moreover, began with fire. Ann Mosborg, Project Management
Supervisor with the Minneapolis Community Development Agency (MCDA), acknowledged that “the fire
gave us impetus” to save the building and start redevelopment.59 What to do with the burned-out hulk
of the Crown Roller Mill forced the city’s hand in voting on whether to restore or demolish the structure.
Yet there are many who saw restoration of the Crown Roller Mill as a failure—a complete overhaul of the
structure’s multilayered history no less abject than demolition. Some viewed the complete rebuilding of
the Crown Roller Mill as a missed opportunity to incorporate the ruins into the design rather than simply
rebuild. Thomas Meyer, who would go on to design the Mill City Museum within the ruins of the
Washburn “A” Mill, feared the City Council would vote to “knock [the “A” Mill] down in a few years or
only look for somebody who would do a kind of Crown Mill number on it, which was just as bad.” After
some laughter with his interviewer, Linda Mack, they both agreed, “And maybe worse.”60 The loss of the
ruins—what some viewed as a loss of authenticity—would inform subsequent projects in the Mill
District. Another fire in 1991 again galvanized debate on this exact issue.
57 Ryan, “A growing neighborhood.” The Ceresota Building was historically known as the Northwestern
Consolidated Milling Company Elevator A. It was one of the largest brick grain elevators in the country.
58 Ann K. Ryan, “Former mill tops off river space,” Skyway News, November 3, 1987, in the Buildings: Crown Roller
Mill Envelope #1 vertical file, JHSC; Ryan, “A growing neighborhood.”
59 Furst, “City spends $195,000.”
60 Thomas Meyer, interview by Linda Mack, 9-10.

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Mill City Museum
In May 1983, Secretary of the Interior James Watt designated twelve historic properties as
National Historic Landmarks. Among them were the Milton S. Hershey Mansion in Hershey,
Pennsylvania, the Phelps Dodge General Office Building in Bisbee, Arizona, and the Washburn “A” Mill
Complex in Minneapolis.61 Developers had proposed many uses for the Washburn “A” Mill throughout
the years. In 1987, Arvid Elness Architects, Inc. suggested creation of a museum within the head house
atop the complex’s grain elevators as part of its larger Mill Place Centre proposal. Victor Zuethen, a vice
president with the firm, noted that someone initially “mentioned bringing in the Disney people” to
design an open-air elevator or “Skyway-type conveyor belt” to transport guests to this head house
museum.”
62 None, including this one, came to pass. In 1991, fire again engulfed the mill.
The inferno was first reported at 7:24 p.m. on February 26, 1991. A crew of 55 firefighters
battled the fire with 15 rigs, dousing adjacent grain mills and warehouses to prevent it from spreading.
At 8:15 p.m., the top of the building’s east side “crashed to the ground, releasing huge billows of smoke
and fire,” with its upper stories collapsing fifteen minutes later, “exposing blazing timbers within.” By 10
p.m., the mill’s north side had also crumbled, “leaving a rickety spire of limestone” on the structure’s
northeast corner.63 Preservationists again were able to convince the firefighters to resist knocking down
the remaining walls as the most efficient method of extinguishment. Minneapolis Fire Chief Tom
Dickinson believed there was a “good probability” the cause, once again, was arson.64
61 James Watt to Director of National Park Service, re Designation of National Historic Landmarks, May 4, 1983,
appendix item in George R. Adams and James B. Gardner, “Washburn A Mill Complex,” National Register of
Historic Places Nomination Form, September 1978.
62 “Mill City Museum Grand Opening: Join Us For a Party of Historic Magnitude,” undated, in the Museums: Mill
City Museum vertical file, JHSC.
63 Jill Hodges and Kevin Duchschere, “Historic Minneapolis mill falls to fire,” Star Tribune, February 27, 1991, in the
Buildings: MPLS: Washburn-Crosby Mill Complex vertical file, JHSC.
64 The MCDA had purchased (and left vacant) the building in 1988 for $3.1 million from Riverside Industries. Randy
Furst, “Fire was final dramatic event at historic Minneapolis mill,” Star Tribune, February 28, 1991; Dan Hauser,

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A fire wall separated the north and south sections of the mill, but flames gutted its interior.
Among the crowd of more than 100 who had gathered to watch the spectacle was local archaeologist
Scott Anfinson. The building contained “probably the best reservoir of turn-of-the-century milling
equipment in the United States,” he said in disbelief.65 This equipment now lay as ash amidst the rubble.
Tom Meyer, who stared in shock at the smoldering ruins the next morning, mourned the loss of this
“priceless” equipment, as well as the ability to understand how the milling process worked “in totality”
from exploring this equipment. He reflected, “It’s like having some amazing gold watch with all the
moving parts and everything interconnected to it. When you lose the insides, it’s not the same if you still
have the outside.”66 As with the Crown Roller Mill, however, fire again galvanized preservation efforts.
Nina Archabal noted that the mill’s reduction to rubble had actually simplified decision-making.
The “huge building,” previously daunting and unwieldy in scope, had suddenly become “something with
“Burned Mill May Not Be a Total Loss,” Skyway News, March 4, 1991, in the Buildings: MPLS: Washburn-Crosby
Mill Complex vertical file, JHSC.
65 Furst, “Fire was final dramatic event.” This included dust collectors, flour sifters, line shifts, pulleys, and wooden
boxes used on conveyor belts to move flour and grain.
66 Thomas Meyer, interview with Linda Mack, 10.
Figures 32 and 33 – On the left, a view of the Washburn “A” Mill’s north elevation, looking south. On the right, an interior
view of debris and fire damage dangling from the mill’s east wall. The Gold Medal Flour sign can be seen in the background.
These photos were taken as part of the Historic American Engineering Record’s (HAER) documentation of the 1991 fire, c.
1993. Images courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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which we could deal.”67 In July 1991, the Minneapolis City Council approved nearly $370,000 to stabilize
and prevent the ruins from crumbling further before restoration. The MCDA in the ensuing years
removed 40-foot piles of rubble and pockets of asbestos from the site.68
In March 1991, Linda Mack published an op-ed in the Star Tribune with a bold idea on how to
move forward with the complex. “Strange enough,” Mack wrote, “the fire created what has been missing
from the Mississippi riverfront—a living remnant of the gritty, dangerous reality of milling history.” With
its jagged walls, dangling metal, and blown-out windows, the Washburn “A” Mill now “engages the
imagination in a way a renovated building never can.” After all, she noted, “the dangers of working the
tall mills surrounded by moving machinery and holes dropping nine floors” had made Minneapolis “the
center of the artificial limb industry.” Fire and cave-ins were as integral a part of the story as the
innovative machinery. Apart from the fire itself, Mack argued, “the greatest travesty would be cleaning
up the “A” mill and making it just as lifeless as the rest of the redeveloped riverfront.” Demolishing a
National Historic Landmark was not an option, but “rebuilding the exterior, as was done at the nearby
Crown Roller Mill,” was “almost equally undesirable.”69
Mack’s op-ed contained language evocative of a picturesque ruin—something she and Anfinson
felt the riverfront lacked despite its panoply of abandoned properties. If preservationists did not view
the vacant properties themselves as veritable ruins, the Washburn’s demise created a more extreme
aesthetic many saw value in maintaining. The mill, moreover, still had two walls almost full height,
preserving “a sense of the enormous vertical space of a mill,” according to Anfinson. Mack wrote, “In its
present state half-filled with debris and pieces of old machinery poking through blown-out windows, the
former eight-story limestone building makes a spectacular ruin.” She continued, “Up high, half of a metal
67 Nina Archabal, interview with Linda Mack, 3.
68 “Mill City Museum Press Kit.”
69 Linda Mack, “Mill ruin presents unique opportunity,” Star Tribune, March 20, 1991, in the Buildings: MPLS:
Washburn-Crosby Mill Complex vertical file, JHSC.

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shed… dangles in the air” while a “steel beam pokes out of a window” and “roofing from the old office
addition blows in the wind.” Today’s most “avant-garde architects,” she concluded, “strive to create such
sordid and dynamic effects and call it deconstructivism. The mill ruins are the real thing. What they have
is what the riverfront lacks so sorely—the authenticity to evoke the past.”70 The pink curlicue lampposts
and delicate trees that “Victorianize industrial history” outside the Crown Roller Mill apparently did not
suffice as an industrial theme for Mack. What she called for was something more raw, more dangerous,
and consequently, in her view, more authentic.
Mack’s op-ed reveals that local Minnesotans understood the fire did not destroy, but rather
changed the mill’s interpretive value. Lost was the priceless milling equipment inside, but forged in the
fire was new potential to reveal a new dimension of the “gritty, dangerous reality of milling history.”
What Mack did not mention was the additional layer of several decades of the mill’s abandoned
history—the very cause of this and numerous other fires. “Americans travel halfway around the world to
see the ruins of other cultures,” she wrote.71 What the 1991 fire created was a chance for Minneapolis to
have some of its own. By many metrics, much of the abandoned riverfront already featured a ruined
landscape, no less authentic than the crumbling walls created by the fire. But restoration of the Crown
Roller Mill had engendered a realization in many preservationists that there was aesthetic appeal (and
thus touristic value) in the more dramatic ruins created by fire. The Washburn “A” Mill, once a sight of
strength and solidity, now crumbled in picturesque fashion. Mack was not alone in her association of
Minneapolis’s “instant ruin” with those scattered across Europe.
Scholars have long analyzed the multiple meanings ruins hold for different people. Novelist Rose
Macaulay in The Pleasure of Ruins described the myriad ways in which people have interpreted ruins,
“on how much of it is admiration for the ruin as it was in its prime… how much aesthetic pleasure in its
70 Ibid.
71 Ibid.

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present appearance… what part is played by morbid pleasure in decay, by righteous pleasure in
retribution… by mystical pleasure in the destruction of all things mortal… by egotistic satisfaction in
surviving… and by a dozen other entwined threads of pleasurable and melancholy emotion.”72 Given the
significant number of other abandoned sites that many would consider industrial ruins, Minneapolis
preservationists in the 1990s seemed fixated on the haunting, raw aesthetic value offered by a fire-torn
hulk. The Washburn “A” Mill suddenly offered their riverfront a romanticized and picturesque window
onto the past, revealing the dangerous, often explosive conditions in which mill workers toiled.
Other preservationists echoed Mack’s calls to preserve the ruins as a cultural site found more
commonly abroad. “Keeping the Washburn Mill as a ruin is something one might expect in Europe, said
Eric Deloney, chief of the Historic American Engineering Record. “Europe has stately ruins all over the
place” while “our monuments are industrial buildings.” If these buildings have no use, “why not keep the
memory of them and preserve them as ruins?”73 Richard Victor, senior project coordinator for the
MCDA, felt the Washburn “A” Mill now had “an eerie, raw feeling.” He continued, “You can go to Europe
and Africa and see historic ruins.” The Washburn “A” Mill was a far cry from “the Great Sphinx or the
pyramids or the Acropolis… [but] it’s a fascinating industrial ruin, and it’s our ruin.” Betsy Doermann of
the MHS acknowledged that “fire and explosion have always been part of the flour-milling industry.” The
site burned down in 1878, 1928, and now 1991—“that’s part of the story we want to tell.”74
This logic of establishing a uniquely American set of industrial ruins to mirror those of antiquity
found its champion in local architect Thomas Meyer, who had his own history of adventuring through the
72 Rose Macaulay, The Pleasure of Ruins (New York: Walker and Company, 1953), xv-xvi. For a look at varied
interpretations of ruins in the nineteenth-century U.S., see Nick Yablon, Untimely Ruins: An Archaeology of
American Urban Modernity, 1819-1919 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
73 Linda Mack, “A skyscraper of its time,” Star Tribune, November 12, 1992, in the Buildings: MPLS: WashburnCrosby Mill Complex vertical file, JHSC.
74 Peg Meier, “Mill with a View,” Star Tribune, June 21, 1998, in the Buildings: MPLS: Washburn-Crosby Mill
Complex vertical file, JHSC.

129
derelict and abandoned Mill District as a student at the University of Minnesota. Seizing the raw,
mysterious, and foreboding feeling these ruins cultivated, Meyer infused his museum design with a
sense of adventure and exploration. He recalled that “it always broke my heart” to walk through the
Crown Roller Mill, where you would find “the most banal of gray carpeted, sheet rocked, fluorescent lit
office buildings.”75 The Mill City Museum would engineer the opposite effect: a visually striking site
inviting tourists to wander and explore its interior.
The museum would feature several exhibits, but none more prominent than the building itself.
“We’re trying to reward that kind of Indiana Jones sense of adventure by putting people in the most
interesting places in the building,” Meyer said. David Wiggins noted that Meyer’s design has helped
center the mill as part of the museum rather than just as a backdrop for the exhibits: “In most museums,
the artifacts are in the cases. In this case, the museum itself is the artifact.” Linda Mack wrote that what
had fascinated Tom Meyer for 30 years was the “sheer physicality of the place, a compact jumble of brick
and concrete buildings, abandoned rail lines and giant grain elevators.” While acknowledging the fire was
tragic, Meyer himself pointed out that “the ruins add to the building’s mystery.” His design aimed to let
the power of the building speak.76
75 Thomas Meyer, interview with Linda Mack, 9.
76 Linda Mack, “Where there’s a mill, there’s a way,” Star Tribune, July 2, 2000, in the Museums: Mill City Museum
vertical file, JHSC.
Figures 34 and 35 – Two photos of the Ruin Courtyard, the left photo looking north from the Courtyard Balcony;
the right photo looking south from the ground towards the museum’s glass façade. In the left photo, the two
rusted cylinders suspended from the wall and two turbine pits can be seen. Photos courtesy of author.

130
Central to this design was an eight-story glass façade that formed a reflective backdrop for the
jagged limestone walls, twisted girders, and broken windows framing the ruined courtyard. Etched onto
the glass façade are cross-sectional drawings delineating the original organization of mill equipment. Two
rusted cylinders hang on the east wall, remnants from what used to be four metal flour bins on the mill’s
second floor. The exposed foundations of two underground turbines, which received rushing water
through a headrace canal to power eight stories of machinery, also remain. The use of glass added a
touch of lightness and transparency amidst the density of historic limestone walls, now permanently
braced against adjoining structures. If many considered grain elevators to be the cathedrals of the Great
Plains, the Mill City Museum quickly became the Upper Midwest’s version of the Louvre, with Meyer’s
design paying homage to I. M. Pei’s glass pyramids set within the Louvre Palace in Paris.
The Mill City Museum can best be understood through its porosity. Multiple entries, vistas, and
vantage points encourage exploration through which visitors make visual connections between the
sections of the mill, its exhibits, the river, and the falls. Meyer believed that to understand the gravity
involved in the flour-making process, visitors needed a view of the waterfall. He considered not just the
building, but the riverfront as part of the exhibit. Visitors are invited to peer into the turbine pits and
climb to the rooftop, where they can view the falls. Guests experience the mill complex and its
Figure 36 – View of the Mill City Museum from atop the Stone Arch Bridge, looking south, c. 2022. On
the far left can be seen the Guthrie Theater; on the far right, the Washburn Lofts (housed in the former
Utility Building) and the Stone Arch Lofts. Photo courtesy of author.

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labyrinthine environs on five different floor levels, with both indoor and outdoor access at various stages
in multiple connected buildings. “You go in. You go down. You go up to the top. You go back down again.
You can [even] go through the rail corridor to the Guthrie [Theater],” reflected Meyer.77
Around every corner of the museum, “a glimpse, a relic, a seemingly forgotten patch of the
abandoned mill, even graffiti,” awaits detection. “I wanted to keep it as a place for discovery,” Meyer
said, speaking to the Washburn “A” Mill and surrounding building as the playground from his
undergraduate days. Transforming the complex too much, Meyer feared, might “gentrify it so completely
that the explorability is spoiled.” The architect felt his design logic “traces itself back to when I was
experiencing the riverfront and working with Peter [Nelson Hall] in this place.” Looking at a screen or
reading an exhibit panel pales in comparison to the ability “to actually explore” the place, walking
around and seeing it “from all different angles.”78 Meyer’s approach provided the Mill City Museum with
an organizational strength rooted in tourists’ sense of adventure they brought when visiting a site chock
full of visual allure and mystery. This was industrial history with an edge, waiting to be discovered.
Two smaller fires in the adjacent Humboldt Mill (1997) and Wheat House (1999) hampered, but
did not halt, the complex’s redevelopment. The site’s aforesaid porosity also rendered security tenuous,
particularly during construction. With so many openings (including tunnels), the prevention of
trespassing proved a near impossible task. Fire officials again believed these two fires were set by
homeless people staying in the vicinity.79 Redevelopment, however, forged on. Brighton Development,
which had also transformed the nearby North Star Woolen Mill into the North Star Lofts, partnered with
the MHS to redevelop the upper stories into commercial space.80 These residential and commercial
77 Thomas Meyer, interview by Linda Mack, 13-14; “Mill City Museum Press Kit.”
78 Coventry, “Historical Recollection”; Thomas Meyer, interview by Linda Mack, 13-14.
79 Steve Brandt, “Mill project is still on track,” Star Tribune, September 8, 1999, in the Buildings: MPLS: WashburnCrosby Mill Complex vertical file, JHSC.
80 “Mill City Museum Press Kit.” The success of this project in the North Star Woolen Mill launched the ongoing
focus on loft living along the Mississippi riverfront in Minneapolis. Brighton completed the Stone Arch Lofts, an

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spaces were indicative of the larger scale Loft Movement reshaping numerous American downtowns. In
Minneapolis, Interior Designer Carol Belz noted that “people are less afraid to leave lofts raw and
industrial, the way they historically looked.”81 High ceilings, exposed brick, large windows, raw concrete
or timber beams, and open floorplans brought an industrial aesthetic into people’s homes.82
Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the Mill City Museum opened to the public in 2003 at the
cost of $25.5 million.83 This included restoration and relighting of the two “Gold Medal Flour” signs
perched atop the grain elevator headhouse. The 42- by 45-foot neon and porcelain signs, featuring 8-
foot-high letters, became a beacon for the new museum when they were relit in 2000 for the first time in
over twenty years.84 The Washburn “A” Mill’s southern half housed the museum’s exhibit space on its
lower floors. Entering from South 2nd Street, visitors enter the former packing floor, now featuring a
museum shop and café. Just past the Mill Commons, visitors arrive in the Rail Corridor, featuring the St.
Paul and Pacific Boxcar #1320 (1879) parked on railroad tracks running through the mill. From here,
visitors can step outside to the courtyard balcony or enter the Train Shed, where workers unloaded
wheat and flour onto railcars using tubes hung from the ceiling and still in place. The Train Shed hosts
the Mill City Farmers Market each Saturday morning from May through October.
The smell of baked bread wafts through the Gallery, engineering nostalgic sentiment. Guests
gaze at vintage TV commercials, packaging, and advertising memorabilia, reminding them that Betty
Crocker and the Pillsbury Doughboy began their journeys along the Minneapolis riverfront. A giant
infill project built atop the vacant site of the Washburn “B” Mill, the Washburn Lofts in the Washburn Utility
Building, and the Humboldt Lofts in the Humboldt Mill. The Mill City Museum thus shared much of the original
Washburn complex’s space with private redevelopment.
81 “A lofty escape,” Minnesota Monthly, Vol. 14, no. 2 (March 2005): 74-81.
82 For more information on the Loft Movement, see Sharon Zukin, Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change
(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1982).
83 “Mill City Museum Information Sheet,” in the Museums: Mill City Museum vertical file, JHSC.
84 David Hawley, “Signs will shine again,” Star Tribune; “New life for old signs,” Saint Paul Pioneer Press, May 3,
2001, in the Museums: Mill City Museum vertical file, JHSC. Restoration cost $250,000. General Mills donated
$130,000 to the project. Similar renovations including the re-illumination of the Milwaukee Road Depot clock
tower, the North Star Blankets rooftop sign, and the “Pillsbury’s Best Flour” sign on the east bank.

133
yellow and blue “Bisquick” baking mix box dominates the gallery interior. Kids (or adults) can get their
hands wet in the Water Lab, where they can learn how waterpower from St. Anthony Falls drove the
Minneapolis flour and lumber mills. In the Baking Lab—an homage to the Betty Crocker Test kitchens—
employees offer baking demonstrations and fresh-baked samples.85 Nineteenth-century milling
machines including grain cleaners, roller mills, sifters, a middlings purifier, dust collectors, and flour
packers tell the story of how workers prepared flour for market. Guests become immersed in the
intricacy and scale of flour production as they walk around these machines, connected to an overhead
network of pulleys, belts, and wheels.86 The combination of Gallery exhibits speak to both the
production and consumption of flour, immersing guests in a sensory experience that simultaneously
affirms the complexity of production while reminding them that it is all in service to them, the
consumers, and the products they buy to put on their tables.
The Flour Tower serves as the Mill City Museum’s signature exhibit, transporting guests via
freight elevator from the first-floor Gallery to the adjacent Wheat House eight stories above. The ride
stresses the verticality of operations, offering a multimedia simulation of a working flour mill that whirs,
spins, and vibrates. Rather than feature a simple ascent from first to eighth floor, the journey snakes up
and back down in seemingly random order. Interestingly, Disney World’s accelerated drop tower dark
85 The Betty Crocker Test Kitchens were an important component of a robust tourist package the Washburn Crosby
Company (and then General Mills) offered consumers in the twentieth century. General Mills and Pillsbury both
offered guided tours of their flour mills similar to the Hershey factory tour. Guests came from all over the world to
see the rival “A” mills in Minneapolis. General Mills initially offered tours of its Test Kitchens in the Utility Building
and then in the Golden Valley suburbs. Between 1947 and 1985, when the tours were conducted, roughly 1.5
million visitors toured the facilities. See Gold Medal Flour, “Minneapolis is known as the world’s greatest flour
milling center,” brochure, c. 1920s, in the Businesses: Washburn Crosby Milling Co. vertical file, JHSC; “Visitors
From All the World,” Carry-On Pillsbury Employee Newsletter, Vol. 2, no. 9 (October 1919), Accession 151.H.14.3,
Box 19, Folder “Carry-On Newsletters,” Richard Ferrell Flour Milling Industry History Collection, GFL. For more on
the Betty Crocker Test Kitchens, see Susan Marks, Finding Betty Crocker: The Secret Life of America’s First Lady of
Food (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005); Laura Shapiro, “And here she is… your Betty Crocker!”
American Scholar, Vol. 73, no. 2 (2004): 87-99; “Betty Crocker Kitchen Tours,” brochure, undated, in the MPLS:
General Mills, Inc.: Betty Crocker Kitchens vertical file, JHSC.
86 Given the loss of the Washburn “A” Mill’s collection of historic, nineteenth-century milling equipment in the
1991 fire, many of these machines came from the Albany Roller Mills in Albany, Minnesota. “Mill City Museum
Press Kit.”

134
ride in Florida, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, had replaced its triple-drop experience with computerrandomized, multi-drop sequences in January 2003, just months before the Mill City Museum’s debut.87
The Flour Tower, while much tamer, mirrored this randomized sequencing. Lighting, sound, and special
effects simulate the noisy and dangerous conditions in which workers labored. Voices from the men and
women who worked in the mill echo through the freight elevator. At one point, workers come to life via
rear projections as they load sacks of flour onto rail cars. At another point, a machine’s belt breaks and
slaps violently in the air while voices reflect on the dangers of the job. Of constant concern was the dust,
which one worker recalls would combine with sweat that he would have to comb “to get the goo-balls
out.”88
At journey’s end, guests exit the freight elevator’s opposite side and enter the adjacent Wheat
House, where workers used to sift out impurities from the grain. The Wheat House retains much of its
historic milling equipment, left intact since General Mills left in 1965. Interpreters describe how the
bucket elevators transported wheat vertically throughout the building and cyclone dust collectors helped
protect workers from the dangers of flour-dust explosions and miller’s lung, or white lung disease. The
87 Rob Johnson, “Disney-MGM Studios tower cranks up the terror,” The Orlando Sentinel, November 29, 2002. The
Tower of Terror itself offers commentary on the tourist appeal of ruins as sites of danger and exploration, ushering
guests into the dilapidated Hollywood Tower Hotel.
88 Jerry V. Halnes, “Flour Power at a Minneapolis Mill,” The Washington Post, September 4, 2005.
Figures 37 and 38 – On the left, a view of the Wheat House, with its assortment of historic equipment used to
sift grain. On the right, a photo from an eighth-floor window showing the modern bracing used to affix and
secure the ruins of the Washburn “A” Mill to the adjacent grain elevators, c. 2022. Photos courtesy of author.

135
Wheat House represents one of the museum’s strongest exhibits, with the historic equipment revealing
the scale, intricacy, and complexity of operations. Although it is non-operative today, visitors can imagine
the small augurs moving wheat horizontally through troughs above their head while visualizing the
gargantuan cyclone dust collectors vibrating with material. Light shines through the eighth-story
windows, contrasting starkly with the darkness of the Flour Tower ride.
After lingering in the Wheat House, guests can ascend one more story to a ninth-floor outdoor
Observation Deck, which provides a panoramic view of the riverfront. This view connects all the exhibits
to the original source of power: the Mississippi River and St. Anthony Falls. Just below stands the Ruin
Courtyard, which visitors are invited to explore after their descent back to ground level. The Ruin
Courtyard, as with many previous postindustrial sites, hosts evening concerts and weddings, with “quite
a long” waiting list.89 The ease with which visitors may retrace their steps, weave in and out of the
numerous exhibits, and view the Ruin Courtyard from multiple angles (via the observation deck,
courtyard balcony, or within) invites a sense of adventure and exploration when visiting the museum.
89 Thomas Meyer, interview by Linda Mack, 14.
Figure 39 – View of the Mississippi River and St. Anthony Falls from the ninth-floor observation deck, c. 2022. In the
foreground sits Mill Ruins Park. The Stone Arch Bridge, now a pedestrian pathway, bisects the river. Behind the bridge
is the Upper Lock and Dam. The Pillsbury “A” Mill sits on the far side of the river’s east bank. Photo courtesy of author.

136
Mill Ruins Park
Dedication in 2001 of Mill Ruins Park, unearthed after decades buried beneath the J. L. Shiely
Sand and Gravel Pits, rounds out our examination of the Mill District’s divergent use of ruins. In this case,
the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board led a team of preservationists that excavated and showcased
the ruins of several industrial structures. Archaeological investigations conducted during the
construction of the West River Parkway in the 1980s had revealed the location of several demolished
mills. These included the foundations of the Excelsior Mill, the Minneapolis Mill, the Pillsbury “B” Mill,
and the Empire Mill. These buildings had been razed between 1929 and 1931 and buried again in 1962
with fill during the construction of the St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam. Digging began in July 2000.90 This
row of mills complemented a number of other exposed structures, including a twisted and tangled
portion of the Eastern Railway Trestle and openings of the arched tailraces and tailrace canal where
water returned to the river after powering the mills’ turbines. Today, water again flows from much of this
subterranean maze of tunnels, creating a hauntingly industrial “waterfall” at the park.
“Touching, feeling and smelling history is the powerful notion behind Mill Ruins Park,” Linda
Mack wrote, as the park began taking shape in the shadow of the nearby Stone Arch Bridge. The park
resembled an “instant archaeological dig,” as workers removed 100,000 cubic yards of sand and gravel
from the site in the early 2000s.91 It was not just professionals doing the work. In 2001, over 300
students under a Woodbury school grant worked with MHS archaeologists to unearth brick and
limestone fragments, burned-up coal and glass pieces, and other remnants of the Mill City’s heyday. As
students excavated the site, it took on the resemblance “of a latter-day Pompeii,” again framing the
90 Brandt, “Reclaiming Mill City’s river roots”; Linda Mack, “Hands-on history in the making,” Star Tribune,
September 5, 2000; Linda Mack, “Flour-milling artifacts return city to its roots,” Star Tribune, September 30, 2001,
in the Museums: Mill City Museum vertical file, JHSC.
91 Mack, “Hands-on history”; Mack, “Flour-milling artifacts return city to its roots.”

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Minneapolis riverfront as a distinctly American site of ruin more typically found in Europe.92 In addition
to guided tours, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board continued offering simulated archaeological
digs even after the park had opened as part of its educational mission.93
Although there remains no present access underground to date, archaeologists also excavated
many of the canals in the hopes of adding an “Underground Minneapolis” tour as part of the park’s
offerings. “People take tours of the sewers in Paris,” said Bob Clouse, one of the dig’s chief
archaeologists. “This is comparable to a Roman city in scale and the variety of material,” he said. Much
of the canal system’s stonework, brickwork, and ironwork remained surprisingly intact, including a
suspended wooden catwalk that allowed workers to inspect the tunnel. Archaeological crews were still
able to walk through the City Tunnel, though the floor was mucky and stalactites hung from the ceiling.94
At one point, David Wiggins proposed an idea of creating a pathway for visitors to walk from the Mill City
Museum’s Ruin Courtyard to an underground raceway into the tunnel, then exit another headrace into
Mill Ruins Park, connecting the two sites as something of an explorer’s paradise. Those redeveloping the
museum found the plan too complicated.95 The ultimate lack of public access, however, did not stop Max
Action and his fellow urban explorers from frequently getting into these tailrace tunnels, using Mill Ruins
Park as their base of operations.96
92 Bill McAuliffe, “A little archaeology can go a long way,” Star Tribune, May 3, 2001, in the Museums: Mill City
Museum vertical file, JHSC.
93 “Mill Ruins Park: 2001 Summer/Fall Tours and Digs,” brochure, c. 2001, in the Parks: Mill Ruins Park vertical file,
JHSC.
94 Mack, “Hands-on history.” For more on public access to the Paris sewers, see Donald Reid, Paris Sewers and
Sewermen: Realities and Representations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).
95 David Wiggins, interview by Linda Mack, 23. A 2009 Interpretive Study again called for “underground
exploration,” as well as the addition of more “shade” and a “ruins themed play area.” Saint Anthony Falls Heritage
Board, 2009 Interpretive Study, 45, accessed February 20, 2024, Report.indd (mnhs.org).
96 See Melody Gilbert’s documentary Urban Explorers: Into the Darkness (2007) for footage of these explorations.

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In 2003, redevelopers also added walkways so pedestrians could safely read interpretive panels
and explore the ruins up-close. Their addition, however, prompted debate on how ruins should best be
experienced. One of the more polarizing scholars of ruins and urban exploration is cultural geographer
Tim Edensor, who, in Industrial Ruins: Space, Aesthetics, and Materiality, looks at the social production of
ruined space. Exploring a ruin, Edensor writes, “is a kind of anti-tourism” because “movement is rough,
disrupted and potentially perilous, replete with sensations other than the distanced gaze… no one is
there to enforce performative norms.” Heritage, for Edensor, “banishes ambiguity and the innumerable
ways of interpreting the past to compile a series of potted stories and spatially regulated displays.”
Heritage requires the “removal of complex, indeterminate, unordered, and confusing debris…”—all of
which he celebrates within ruined spaces.97 At his most scathing, Edensor claims that heritage leaves no
room for multiple expressions, constructing rather a finite and rigid story of how a place is to be
97 Tim Edensor, Industrial Ruins: Space, Aesthetics, and Materiality (New York: Berg, 2005), 95, 133-134. Edensor’s
most controversial contention holds that ruins call into question the “persistent myth of progress” in Western
society. Industrial ruins “tempered the optimism of modern industrial development” (p. 11). In Corporate
Wasteland, Steven High disagrees with Edensor on this count, suggesting, rather, that industrial ruins reify rather
than rebuke visions of capitalist progress. The two scholars’ scales of perspective—one solely interested in the
aesthetic nature of local ruins, the other approaching the question with full knowledge of the globalized nature of
capital mobility—reinforces their arguments. By ignoring historical context in place of aesthetic value, Edensor
holds no company accountable for its actions in abandoning the site and the people who worked there. This
difference in approach supports High’s notion that industrial ruins do not reveal capitalism’s shortcomings and
failures, but rather remind us of capital mobility and the local destruction left in its wake. In the words of Elizabeth
Blackmar, these ruins are “smoking guns of criminal neglect.”97 See Elizabeth Blackmar, “Review: Modernist Ruins,”
American Quarterly 53, no. 2 (June 2001): 337.
Figures 40 and 41 – Views of Mill Ruins Park at daytime and nighttime, c. 2022. On the left, a view of Mill Ruins Park from atop Stone Arch
Bridge, with views of the mill foundations, railway trestle ruins, and tailrace canal on the far right. Above the bank, in the upper left sits the
Mill City Museum; in the upper right, the Crown Roller Mill. On the right, a nighttime view of Mill Ruins Park from the pathway, showing the
Stone Arch Bridge and North Star Blankets sign illuminated. Photos courtesy of author.

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remembered. One value (of many) that ruins hold for society, he believes, lies in countering such
romantic and uncritical views of the past.
What, then, do we make of ruins put in service of tourism, as done at Mill City Museum and Mill
Ruins Park? Edensor might suggest they are no longer “authentic” ruins, but rather stabilized examples
“frozen in time” to make a point. Even if Edensor’s view of heritage’s stifling nature rings true, Mill Ruins
Park certainly leaves room for multiple interpretations. Some might celebrate the park as a triumphant
example of adaptive reuse and renewed urban identity. A host of redeveloped buildings, including both
previous case studies, frames Mill Ruins Park just above the riverbank. As we have seen, a similar
juxtaposition between “ruined” and “new” exists within the Mill City Museum itself, dramatized by a
glass building set within jagged limestone walls. Others may view Mill Ruins Park in even more romantic
fashion, as Minneapolis’s own “latter-day Pompeii” and evocative of European picturesque ruins. And, as
Max Action and fellow urban explorers have shown, simply because pedestrian pathways exist to render
the site safe does not mean all patrons will abide by those rules. Mill Ruins Park as a site of sanctioned
(and unsanctioned) exploration still exists. The multiplicity of interpretations reveals that ruins have
played an integral part in the Minneapolis riverfront’s renaissance, foregrounding adventure and
exploration as key themes in the area’s multilayered history.
A Generative Theme
In fits and starts, Minneapolis’s Mill District gradually joined the ranks of other revitalized
waterfronts throughout the country, many from former industrial uses. San Francisco’s Ghirardelli
Square—what many consider to be the first successful adaptive reuse project in the country—and
Monterey’s Cannery Row, are just two such models on California’s Pacific Coast. Lacking a centralized
planner such as James Rouse, the Mill District took a more circuitous path to redevelopment, but this
resulted in a more diverse cadre of preservation methods. The treatment of ruins in our three case

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studies showcases this diversity. One additional element of redevelopment included design guidelines
for new buildings. “New construction,” the Mills District Plan of 1983 laid out, “should respect the scale,
color and material of historic buildings,” capable of evoking from the observer “direct historical
associations with the general theme of the historic district.”98 Eleven on the River, opened in 2022 and
designed by starchitect Robert A.M. Stern’s firm, features windows “inspired by the arched stone
buildings that neighbor it on the Mississippi, including the Stone Arch Bridge.”99 Adaptive reuse, in other
words, has imbued new buildings with its turn-of-the-century industrial theme.
This new construction, much of which has emerged in the streets a block or two removed from
the riverfront, reinforces a more comfortable and cleaned up version of Minneapolis’s industrial legacy.
Trees, lighted pathways, and a serene ambiance have replaced the din, soot, and chaos of the turn-ofthe-century industrial area, to say nothing of its derelict interregnum prior to postindustrial change. The
Mill District, despite the preservation of ruins, has been shorn of its rougher edges. Describing the Mill
District’s industrial heyday, one writer noted that the Mississippi “frequently looked like black paste, a
chunky jumble of logs, lumber, and trash” from the industrial and human waste produced by the rapid
pace of development. Streets too exhibited a “a sludgy mixture of mud and industrial waste.”100 Today, as
so many residents make their homes in and around postindustrial buildings, people are not so much
escaping, but retreating to the security of their homes, and withdrawing into a cozier view of
Minneapolis’s industrial past. The Mill District remains a site of danger and adventure, but one blended
with a rose-colored nostalgia too quick to forget just how disgusting industrial activity can be.
Flour milling continues, but far removed from the sight of those living in its former spaces of
production along the riverfront. As Erik Loomis discusses in Out of Sight: The Long and Disturbing Story
98 “Mills District Plan,” January 1983, 24.
99 “Eleven on the River,” website, accessed July 10, 2023, ELEVEN | MINNEAPOLIS (elevenontheriver.com).
100 Hart, “The Minneapolis That Time Forgot.”

141
of Corporations Outsourcing Catastrophe, Americans in the late twentieth century had much less direct
visual access to the typical factory that dominated city skylines in preceding decades. Visibility of
American industry retreated from view, courtesy of both stringent environmental regulations and global
capital mobility. Whether corporations moved to the reclusive suburbs of Golden Valley or abroad—
Americans’ collective image of industry came to be replaced by adaptively reused areas such as the Mill
District.
The ruins left behind have filled in this gap. As we have seen, ruins offer legitimate tourist
appeal. Among their many interpretive meanings, their association with adventure and urban
exploration dominates in Minneapolis. The danger, mystery, and allure of exploring the ruined area, by
urban explorers from all walks of life, informed preservation of several key projects. These ruins serve as
a visual callback to not just the area’s industrial legacy, but that of abandonment at the height of the
city’s deindustrialized years. They speak to a multifaceted legacy forged in fire. These ruins nevertheless
are subsumed within the larger framework of redevelopment, almost suggestive of a triumphalist,
boosterish municipal message of adaptive reuse. Preservationists and private developers have today
rendered the Mill District safe and accessible to explore, retaining just an edge of the past danger.
Postindustrial tourism in Minneapolis, through the Mill City Museum and Mill Ruins Park, has
commodified and rendered (relatively) safe the otherwise illicit practice of urban exploration,
broadening its appeal to a wider demographic while maintaining a tamer form of discovery. Steven High,
in Corporate Wasteland, argues, “We find that these urban explorers turn former sites of production into
sites of consumption, transforming them into deindustrial playgrounds.”101 The Mill District represents
one of the United States’ preeminent deindustrial playgrounds. Interpretive signs, wall plaques,
sculptures, statues, and pieces of old milling and railroad equipment dot the landscape. The ad-hoc,
101 High, Corporate Wasteland, 44.

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haphazard placement of these relics, which frequently seem hidden just around the corner, encourages
exploration and adventure throughout the district.
This transformation is not yet complete. Perhaps one day Mill Ruins Park will in fact feature its
“ruins themed play area.”102 Hamm’s Brewery in St. Paul—a site Action Squad labeled “a ‘Grade-A’
industrial playground,”—is now in the works to become an arts and entertainment complex, replete with
slides, rides, a Ferris wheel, and a zip line from its tallest smokestack.103 The preserved ruins invite a
sense of danger and adventure, but offer exploration of these sites in more controlled and accessible
fashion. Tourists to the Mill District find their adventurous impulses satiated well beyond those of the
didactic and nostalgic variety—yet all three co-exist. Urban exploration of inaccessible sites began illicitly
as soon as General Mills and other corporations left the riverfront. Postindustrial tourism merely
commodified these practices. Industry in the Mill District today has become comfortable, aesthetically
pleasing, and above all else, fun. People live, work, and play there. And yet, unlike the urban exploration
of years past, the Mill City Museum offers interpretive value on deindustrialization in addition to its
aestheticization. Visitors to the site may certainly explore the ruins. But they may also inquire about the
dangers of flour milling, the dangers of transient living in vacant properties, and the toll these dangers
exacted on those populating the mills in different eras. These multiple legacies live on in the Mill
District’s flagship attraction.
102 Saint Anthony Falls Heritage Board, 2009 Interpretive Study, 45.
103 Tad Vezner, “A plan for Hamm’s: Massive arts and entertainment complex proposed,” Twin Cities Pioneer Press,
October 26, 2019, accessed July 10, 2023, St. Paul Can Can Wonderland head plans Hamm’s brewery development
(twincities.com).

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Chapter 4: From a “Groundhog Hole”: Access and Transformation in the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine
Beckley, West Virginia at midcentury faced a period of transition. Senator John F. Kennedy,
campaigning in Charleston in April 1960, remarked that “when nearly a third of the men of Beckley are
without work to support their families” and “when coal mines are closed down… they stand as a bitter
indictment of our national policies and our national leadership.”1 There was in fact no dearth of coal
mining in southern West Virginia at the time, but the game had changed. As the century progressed, the
industry that once throbbed with the “heartbeat of America’s working class” had slowly become a
“highly mechanized, technologically sophisticated international business.”2 The industry produced more
coal than ever before, but fewer workers were needed. Beckley and its workers had served as the
epicenter of coal production in the region. A 1971 Chamber of Commerce publication pointed out that
under the city lies a coalfield “so vast that 25 percent of all the bituminous coal mined in the United
States [came] from an area inscribed within a 50-mile radius of Beckley.”3 As the mining industry
mechanized and globalized in the 1960s, Senator Kennedy referenced “ideas to promote [the state’s]
tourist industry” as a new form of economic development in his speech in Charleston.4 The city of
Beckley sought to add to this initiative with the opening of its own exhibition mine in 1962.
This chapter examines the dramatic and unexpected ways in which developers physically
transformed the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine from a hole in the ground into one of the nation’s
premiere mine tour destinations. The attraction that emerged was a far cry from the drift mine that lay
hidden beneath a groundhog hole for half a century. Instead, local developers crafted a subterranean
1 Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy at Charleston, West Virginia, April 11, 1960, Remarks of Senator John F.
Kennedy at Charleston, West Virginia, April 11, 1960 | JFK Library.
2
“Coal Heritage Trail: adventure in southern W. Va.,” The Dominion Post, May 20, 1998, in the Trails… Coal
Heritage vertical file, West Virginia State Archives, Charleston, West Virginia [hereafter WVSA].
3 Beckley-Raleigh County West Virginia, Beckley-Raleigh County Chamber of Commerce (Encino: Windsor
Publications, 1971), 6, Heritage Room, Raleigh County Public Library, Beckley, West Virginia [hereafter RCPL].
4 Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy, April 11, 1960.

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ride from this space that offered safety, accessibility, and immersion for incoming guests. The Beckley
Exhibition Coal Mine harkens back to neither the “gush” of oil erupting from the earth nor the “boom” of
a flour explosion sending shockwaves through the city, but to a worksite so cramped and dark it offered
no visual appeal in its excavated state. Miners tasked with extracting coal from low-seam deposits
typically worked in spaces two to three feet in height, with only a carbide lamp to guide them. This
particular manifestation of “boom” dramatizes industrial work from the opposite, but no less visceral,
extreme to that of the preceding two chapters. Rather than highlight the spectacle of gushers or
explosions, the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine underlines the daily sacrifice, drear, and danger of work in
cramped quarters and total darkness.
To render the drift mine safe, accessible, and visible, redevelopers needed to chip away at the
claustrophic-inducing space in several ways. This chapter interrogates the immersive experience created
by these changes. Key to this immersion was the maintenance of the dark, damp, and stifling
atmosphere, despite a severe height extension to enable safe passage, as well as the testimony of
former miners who bring the story of low-seam coal mining to life. The tourist attraction incorporated a
pastiche of eras of mining history and technique. Despite resulting technological and physical
inconsistencies underground, this chapter suggests that the stories told by former miners rang true in a
different manner. Sobering accounts of the hardships they faced counter more traditional, triumphalist
narratives of American grit, spirit, and work ethic. The transformed space thus offers an immersive
platform on which these stories from the ground up can be told, enabling former miners in the Beckley
Exhibition Coal Mine to craft a particularly working-class manifestation of “boom” underground.
Pocahontas, Virginia and Early Mine Tours
Although the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine is today one of, if not the most famous mine tours in
the country, it was not the first to open. John Sears writes that “it was common for tourists to visit coal

145
mines [even] in the nineteenth century.”5 The Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine Tour in Cripple Creek, Colorado
was one of the first to offer tourists a view of gold mine extraction. As early as the 1890s, guests could
descend 1,000 feet underground to view operations by candlelight, with demand becoming so great that
operators eventually decided to redirect tours to the already excavated 700-foot level. Tours were
conducted by day with most mining activities, including blasting, resuming at night.6 Nor was the Beckley
Exhibition Coal Mine one of the nation’s earliest coal mines to offer tours. This distinction belongs to the
Pocahontas Exhibition Coal Mine, a mile south of the West Virginia state border in Pocahontas, Virginia.
Pocahontas became one of the first “show” mines in the country when it opened to the public in 1938.
Since then, well over a million visitors have walked, driven, or bicycled through the semi-bituminous coal
mine.
Pocahontas Mine Number 1, or the “Baby Mine,” became the town’s first commercial mine to
open in 1882, with the larger West and East mines flanking its sides within the following two years.
When extraction in the Baby Mine ended, developers sealed off passageways that connected this historic
section with ongoing production in the West Mine. The air blower fan chamber, originally built in 1900 to
regulate air flow, became the tour entrance. A sign posted to the right of the tunnel listed admission as
fifty cents for car and driver with additional passengers costing twenty-five cents each. Pedestrians could
enter for twenty-five-cents. Visitors journeyed through the 13-foot seam in a quarter-mile loop, exiting
out of the original brick-lined mine entrance nearby. Automobile use discontinued around 1970 when
those running the tours noticed damage from car exhaust to the mine’s roof.7
5
John Sears, Sacred Places: American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth Century (Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1989), 206.
6
“Tour History: America’s longest continually operated gold mine tour,” Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine, no date,
accessed March 3, 2024, The Story of Mollie & Her Famous Gold Mine (goldminetours.com).
7
John W. Bond, “Pocahontas Mine No. 1,” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form (Washington, DC:
U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, October 22, 1993), 4-5; Pocahontas Exhibition Coal Mine,
brochure (Bluefield: Pocahontas Operators’ Association, undated) in the Pocahontas Exhibition vertical file, WVSA;
Tour of Pocahontas Exhibition Coal Mine taken by author in Pocahontas, Virginia, April 23, 2022.

146
Work in the West and East mines continued in Pocahontas until 1955. Since then, the mine tour
has persisted despite the surrounding coal town irrevocably changing. An extensive mine dump that
arose near the site has since grown over with vegetation. Gone too are almost all the 400 coke ovens
and miles of railroad tracks that moved coal to the ovens and shipped coal and coke to market. Several
tipples vanished and the entrances to both the West and East mines were sealed.8 The Pocahontas
Exhibition Coal Mine thus offers entry to the oldest portion of the mine, despite becoming increasingly
decontextualized from the surrounding landscape. The site is connected to a world-famous coal seam
that spans seven states from Pennsylvania to Alabama, but its emergence as one of the nation’s first insitu mine tours does not derive from the coal’s reputation. Rather, it was the seam’s unique height. Most
coal seams range from twenty-six to thirty-two inches in height. The fact that the Pocahontas Mine
Number 1 featured a seam that ranged from ten to thirteen feet, and was excavated as such, created a
space almost ready-made for tourists to enter. The mine still needed the addition of safety measures
such as roof bolts, lighting, and sealed passageways from active production. The physical space carved
out by the extraction process, as well as proximity of two entrance points, nevertheless left developers
8 Bond, “Pocahontas Mine No. 1,” NRHP Form, 4.
Figures 42 and 43 – On the left, the mine tour entrance in 1900 fan house, c. 1939; on the right, the mine tour
exit in original brick-lined entrance, c. 1939. Photos courtesy of Becky Kauffman, Eastern Regional Coal Archives.

147
with a site suitable for pedestrian and automobile access. The Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine, however,
began not as a thirteen-foot-seam tunnel, but as little more than a groundhog hole buried beneath a slag
pile.
Unlike Pocahontas Mine Number 1, the seam that would become the Beckley Exhibition Coal
Mine was quite ordinary. The reason for its transformation into a tourist attraction stemmed from its
coincidental location within the boundaries of a new park the city of Beckley was in the process of
establishing in the late 1950s. The mine was originally opened in 1889 by the family of John A. Phillips,
who had purchased fifty acres of land from Alfred F. Beckley in 1850. Mining took place from roughly
1890 to 1910. The Phillips family leased and then sold the mine in 1903 to the Cranberry Fuel Company.
The Cranberry company shipped its first coal from the mine on January 4, 1906, the same year it merged
with the New River Company. Reports of work in the mine deemed it particularly dangerous and uneven.
A Polish miner became the first casualty in 1908 by a slate roof fall. The seam within the Phillips-Sprague
mine held an “irregular thickness from two to four feet,” with the haulageways’ width and height varying
depending on this thickness. After approximately twenty years of operation, the mine closed in 1911 due
to its low height, dangerous conditions, and discovery of a thicker seam across the hollow.9 The PhillipsSprague mine then laid dormant for almost half a century.
Mining operations in the area ceased for good in 1953. At that time, the New River Company
sold 28.45 acres of land to the City of Beckley for $10,000 to develop land for a municipal park. When
first transferred to the city, part of the park property included a large slate dump, which the city leveled
to create a new grassy hill. During this conversion in the late 1950s, an opening no bigger than a
“groundhog hole” was discovered “buried under the slag pile.” Beckley Street Commissioner D. Elmer
9
Lois C. McLean, “Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine,” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, January 22, 1986), A&M 3266, Box 2,
Papers of Mrs. G. Roderick Cheeseman, West Virginia & Regional History Center, Morgantown, West Virginia
[hereafter WVRHC].

148
Warden, with city equipment, “opened the small hole in the hillside and uncovered the entrance” to the
long-forgotten Phillips-Sprague mine. The New River Company “had no record of the mine,” but
company engineers conducted a survey revealing that the “top was in excellent condition, drainage was
good, and much of the original timber was still in place.”10 At this point the city realized they had quite
fortuitously stumbled upon a potential tourist attraction smack dab in the middle of their new, centrally
located New River Park. Warden and W. A. Haslam of the New River Company worked in tandem to
transform and render accessible a passageway that ran roughly 900-feet underground from the
discovered opening. After the state mine inspector greenlit the conversion, the Beckley Exhibition Coal
Mine opened on June 23, 1962.11
Several speakers at the attraction’s opening ceremonies spoke of the local initiative necessary to
see the project through to completion. Speaking to a “medium-sized crowd of listeners,” State
Commerce Commissioner Hulett C. Smith hailed the mine as “an example of what can be done when the
people of an area set their minds to it.” Smith continued, “Tourism is now the fourth largest employer of
persons in West Virginia, and, within four years, the tourist industry will employ more people in the
Mountain State than the coal industry.” He concluded, “The tourism dollar is replacing the dollars
supplied by the coal industry in the past.” Mayor Cecil L. Miller highlighted the fact that “not one dollar,
other than donated equipment and supplies, has been received from another source or governmental
agency.” This local undertaking, he added, was “supported and financed by the citizens of Beckley.”
Mayor Miller estimated that more than 100 people toured the mine immediately after the ceremony.12
Attractions within New River Park itself also proliferated. As of 1975, the park offered an Olympic-size
10 Ibid.; Dallas Boothe, “Exhibition Mine Ready For (Tourist) Business,” Beckley Post-Herald, June 24, 1962, in the
Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine vertical file, WVSA.
11 McLean, “Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine,” NRHP Form.
12 Boothe, “Exhibition Mine Ready for (Tourist) Business.”

149
swimming pool, eight lighted tennis courts, six lighted horseshoe courts, barbeque pits and picnic tables,
and an original Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad caboose.13
William C. Blizzard noted that the Exhibition Coal Mine was “again producing something of value,
affording an example of perhaps the only way in which honey in the rock can be twice robbed.” Blizzard
expressed surprise that “so obvious and desirable a tourist attraction was not sooner developed in West
Virginia.”14 Much of the mine tour has remained the same since its debut, though in the early 1970s
additional passageways were cleared to expand the ride from 900 to 1,500 feet. Developers also laid
track for an outside return route, which exits a second opening and wraps around the hill before
returning to the loading dock.15 The Exhibition Mine attracted 13,500 visitors in its first year of
operation.16 The total has since grown to roughly 50,000 per year. People come from all over the world
to see the mine, though the bulk of visitors arrive from the five states surrounding West Virginia. School
groups comprise a large constituent, with many districts requiring a visit as part of their curriculum.17
13 Beckley Exhibition Mine: Beckley, West Virginia, brochure, c. 1975, P19526, Collection of Beckley Exhibition Coal
Mine Brochures, WVRHC.
14 William C. Blizzard, “Twice-Robbed Honey,” Sunday Gazette-Mail, June 21, 1964, in the Beckley Exhibition Coal
Mine vertical file, WVSA.
15 McLean, “Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine,” NRHP Form.
16 Blizzard, “Twice-Robbed Honey.”
17 Jessica Farrish, “Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine among Top 10 Best History Museums in the United States,” The
Register-Herald, March 29, 2022, accessed on August 30, 2022, Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine among Top 10 Best
History Museums in the United States | State & Region | register-herald.com; Leslie Baker and Tony Basconi,
interview with author, at the site, April 21, 2022.
Figure 44 – Postcard depicting entrance to Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine,
c. 1960s. Author’s personal collection.

150
Subterranean Pastiche
When visitors begin their journey into the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine, they board an electricpowered personnel shuttle, or mantrip, that originally transported miners underground to their various
worksites. Today, the shaft is ten feet wide and more than six feet high, but “you’d be surprised at how
many people have trouble with claustrophobia,” remarked Steve Bilbrey, a tour guide from the 1990s.18
The guide escorts visitors via the mantrip through the tunnels, stopping periodically at various side
shafts. In these side shafts, the guide disembarks the shuttle to offer a demonstration on a mining
technique or explain the working conditions a typical miner would face.
At one of the first stops, guides discuss the dangers of methane and black damp in the mines,
and how to detect these invisible threats. Black damp, or oxygen deficiency, formed in “old, abandoned
worked-out areas of your mine [with] rotten wood [and] decaying timbers.” Miners at the turn of the
century trusted the canary, who did nothing but “squawk and carry on” as long as there was sufficient
oxygen in the area.”19 Guides also demonstrate how miners later in the century used an assortment of
safety lamps to detect the presence of methane. To see, miners initially relied on candles and “teapots,”
which a miner could fill with kerosene, “lard or bacon grease, anything they could find” and stick it on
their hardhat while working. These items typically only provided an hour of light. Carbide lamps provided
an additional two hours of light, but working conditions were still in nearly total darkness. At this point,
guides often turn off the modern breakers and their carbide lamp, extinguishing all light in the mine. “It’s
always darker than a dungeon,” one guide says, “no matter how long you’re in here, your eyes will never
adjust.”20
18 Rick Steelhammer, “A Rich Vein of History: Beckley attraction gives firsthand look at mining’s past,” Charleston
Gazette, April 21, 1995, in the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine vertical file, WVSA.
19 Tour of Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine taken by author in Beckley, West Virginia, April 21, 2022.
20 Ibid.

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Guides often used the side shafts to discuss the hardships miners faced. Apart from the physical
dangers, corporate greed and individual exploitation often played a part in exacerbating their situation.
At one stop, guides discuss the financial realities of coal mining alongside a cart filled to the brim with
coal. A miner was paid twenty cents per cart. Each cart could carry a ton of coal, but companies often
required their miners to fill a “graveyard hump” that often went uncompensated.21 As one might expect,
the opportunities for miners to get cheated out of their labor were rampant. The miners’ upfront
expenses, moreover, put them in debt before ever receiving payment for a load of coal. A miner “cut his
own timbers and installed them as roof supports on his own time.”22 Every tool the miner used—pick,
shovel, drill, powder, carbide, “you name it—he buys at the company store.” These purchases, naturally,
came out of the miners’ wages. Miners were typically paid in company scrip, requiring them to purchase
goods at the company store—at greatly inflated prices. Most lived in company houses, fully furnished
with food, clothing, and furniture bought from the company store.23
21 Tour, Pocahontas Exhibition Coal Mine.
22 Rosalie Earle, “Beckley mine museum depicts conditions in early coal mines,” Charleston Gazette, August 31,
2008, in the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine vertical file, WVSA.
23 Tour, Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine.
Figure 45 – One-ton mine cart filled with coal along tour route in Beckley
Exhibition Coal Mine. Photo courtesy of author.

152
Several side shafts also display machinery and tools to help contextualize the evolution of mining
techniques from the turn of the century to the mechanized methods employed at midcentury. Local
companies had donated many of these machines during the mine’s redevelopment.24 Guides describe
the turn-of-the-century blasting techniques, which required use of a hand augur to drill holes. After
filling the holes with black powder and attaching fuses, or “squibs,” the miner would tie them all
together, crawl out, and yell “Fire! Fire! Fire in the hole!” After the dust had cleared, the miner would get
a pitchfork-shaped shovel to ensure he loaded nothing but lump coal, which he placed in the cart from
the side because there was rarely, if ever, enough height to shovel over the cart. Another side shaft
displays a yellow Jeffrey loading machine, capable of loading a cart of coal a minute. This functioned as a
“big time production booster” but “cost a lot of men their jobs.”25 Southern West Virginia witnessed a
significant out-migration of miners and their families displaced by mechanization. Conveyor belts, cutting
machines, and eventually continuous miners that cut and load coal in one nonstop operation proved
highly lucrative for coal companies, but rendered obsolete countless jobs.
The Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine presents a central location in which a pastiche of mining
history unfolds—a turn-of-the-century mine displaying mid-century machinery which by the late
twentieth century had become obsolete. Part of this stems from the near-impossibility of removing the
24 McLean, “Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine,” NRHP Form.
25 Tour, Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine.
Figure 46 – Jeffrey loading machine and coal scoop along tour route in Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine. Photo courtesy of author.

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old equipment put in place when the museum opened in 1962, or bringing in more up-to-date
equipment whose scale is not compatible with the size of a nineteenth-century drift mine.26 There
remains thus a strain of anachronistic storytelling in the mine tour that runs counter to claims of
“authenticity” that abound in and around the site’s marketing. In the words of Mark Gottdiener,
“Eclecticism and a dizzying postmodern pastiche, rather than historical accuracy, define [the themed]
experience.”27 Rather than present a chronologically sound picture of a specific era of coal mining, the
tour experience within the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine presents its history as a themed space.
The work of cultural critic Frederic Jameson, in his discussion of postmodernism, provides an
important theoretical framework for this themed space. Jameson argues that postmodernism can be
defined as a culture of pastiche, marked by the “complacent play of historical allusion.”28 An exemplary
product that highlights this culture of pastiche, according to Jameson, is the “nostalgia film”—typified by
franchises such as Back to the Future, Indiana Jones, The Mummy, and Lord of the Rings which reify
certain views of the past. Far from just historical films, these stories instead approach the past “through
stylistic connotation, conveying ‘pastness’ by the glossy qualities of the image.”29 These “nostalgia films,”
then, do not simply represent historical content, but create a portrait of the past in which its aesthetics
and image trump the accuracy of its content. These films offer a “new connotation of ‘pastness’ and
pseudohistorical depth,” Jameson writes, “in which the history of aesthetic styles displaces ‘real’
26 Interview, Leslie Baker and Tony Basconi, April 21, 2022. The Pocahontas Exhibition Coal Mine also features midcentury machinery displays, despite all work in the Baby Mine having been done by hand. Tour developers brought
in these machines for use as talking points on the tours.
27 Mark Gottdiener, The Theming of America: American Dreams, Media Fantasies, and Themed Environments
(Boulder: Westview Press, 2001), 79.
28 Frederic Jameson, “The Politics of Theory: Ideological Positions in the Postmodernism Debates,” in The
Ideologies of Theory: Essays, 1971-1986, Volume 2 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 105.
29 Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press,
1991), 19.

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history.”30 The Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine and other postindustrial tourist sites emerged alongside
these “nostalgia films” so prevalent across the landscape of American popular culture.
Jameson articulates a similar approach in postmodern architecture, which speaks more directly
to the redevelopment and storytelling techniques employed underground in Beckley. History is effaced
by historicism, “namely, the random cannibalization of all the styles of the past, the play of random
stylistic allusion.”31 Any one of these techniques presented within the coal mine, whether turn-of-thecentury hand-drilling techniques, or midcentury mechanized techniques, presents a historically accurate
picture. When presented together within one built environment, the ensemble offers a more
stimulating, if anachronistic, presentation. The image of industrial activity, and the sensory experience
created by being underground—the dark, cool, damp atmosphere, its metallic tang, and the silence once
the mantrip comes to a halt—all take precedence over the site’s chronological history.
This approach offers a much more visually engaging experience, even if the temporality of
production is blurred. Simplification and distortion represent two of the consequences of themed
spaces, particularly when inflected by the work of tourist and entertainment professionals trained to
create and market popular environments that appeal to a wide consumer base. Beckley’s early
redevelopment involved few such professionals, but postindustrial tourism at large embraced these
methods of commercial appeal. Historical subjects accordingly become watered down, simplified, and
distorted through the theming process, often losing the complexity and longevity of their history.
Pharaonic Egypt—a popular nineteenth- and twentieth-century American theme—covered millennia of
rich, complex, and varied history. Instead, popular themed spaces such as the Egyptian Theatre in
Hollywood boil down the history to its most visually striking components: pyramids, obelisks,
hieroglyphic-laden monoliths, and the occasional palm tree. The Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine
30 Ibid., 20.
31 Ibid., 18.

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inadvertently mashes together multiple eras of mine history and extractive technology, synthesizing
pastness. This blending risks leaving visitors to Beckley confused at best, or misled and ignorant of these
subtle but important differences at worst.
This historicization further obscures the scale of coal extraction today, made possible by use of
the world’s largest machines. Advanced technologies in many industries have led to a reduction in scale
of production. The steel industry in the 1970s and 80s, for example, witnessed a decline of vast,
integrated steelworks and a rise in smaller and more flexible mini mills.32 Coal mining in the twenty-first
century, however, has reached proportions unfathomable compared to the story presented in Beckley.
Bucket-wheel excavators move and mine immense amounts of overburden in surface-mining operations.
The 14,196-ton Bagger 293, constructed in Germany in 1995, holds the Guinness World Record for
heaviest terrestrial vehicle ever built. This superstructure, standing 310 feet tall and 722 feet long, is
capable of reshaping landscapes with a crew of just five workers.33 A dramatic and stark distinction thus
exists between the modest drift mine operations shown in Beckley and the present-day realities of
bucket-wheel excavation. The sheer size of Bagger 293 reveals that coal extraction continues unabated
and at greater scale than ever before. This runs counter to the premise on which many postindustrial
tourist sites were preserved and redeveloped in an era of deindustrialization—that industry, like previous
eras of American history, stood on the verge of extinction.
Even if extraction has declined in places like West Virginia, issues of human and environmental
exploitation continue unabated in other parts of the world, where corporations continue their quest for
cheap labor and lax environmental regulations.34 The disconnect between historical image and current
32 Raymond Monroe, “The Rise of the US Steel Industry,” The Bridge [National Academy of Engineering] 54, no. 1
(Spring 2024): 11.
33 “Heaviest land vehicle,” Guiness World Records, n.d., accessed on July 16, 2024,
guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/384401-heaviest-land-vehicle.
34 See Andreas Malm, “China as Chimney of the World,” Sage Publications 25, no. 2 (June 2012): 146-177.

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production risks obscuring and muting resistance to ongoing human and environmental concerns
unfolding elsewhere in the world.35 Although unintentional, the normalization of a historicized image of
industry may hinder understanding of what industry looks like today, and where it occurs—usually
(deliberately) out of sight from the average consumer. It suggests that we are living in a greener, cleaner
present than we really are. In the process, the coal mine regains its allure, but no longer as a symbol of
industrial prowess. Silenced and shorn of its polluting potential, the coal mine now represents an exotic
place of mystery, waiting to be discovered by those curious enough to venture inside.
A Working-Class Story
Tour guides at Beckley nevertheless remain focused on a singular historical story: the hardship,
risk, and dedication of the coal miners who toiled there and in similar places. The use of miners as
guides, most of whom touted several decades of experience under their belts, does lend a brand of
authenticity to the experience that would otherwise be lost. The tour narrative might blur chronology,
and the tunnels might display machinery anachronistic to their location, but from the perspective of the
miners’ stories, the experience rings true. Each tour season brings a new batch of guides, but many stay
on for multiple-year stints. Even after retirement, many former guides still come to spend time at
Beckley. Among the community of guides, many are proud to “have forty” (years of experience working
underground), a badge of honor signaling they have done their time in the mines. Leslie Baker, Director
of Operations at the Coal Mine, believes the stories the miners tell serve as the site’s main draw. People
35 Several scholars have argued that with present-day postindustrial sites such as Lowell National Historic Park,
there is little connection of the sort to present-day industry. They claim that what is remembered and
commemorated often bears little, if any, resemblance to current industrial production. For more on this
disconnect, see Cathy Stanton, The Lowell Experiment: Public History in a Postindustrial City (Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 2006). Carolyn Kitch also tracks the narrative disconnect between industrial heritage and
current, ongoing industry, particularly with agriculture, lumber, and oil industries in Pennsylvania. Many sites in
Pennsylvania Amish Country, for instance, present farming as something “quaint” and “old-fashioned.” This
presentation obscures the fact that agriculture remains the state’s largest industry. See Kitch, Pennsylvania in
Public Memory: Reclaiming the Industrial Past (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 57-74.

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“love them” and “everybody gives a slightly different story” based on their personal experiences. She
fears, however, that eventually there will come a time when there are too few remaining coal miners to
serve as tour guides.36
Several scholars have addressed the ambivalence many workers feel toward the historicization
and commemoration of their former workplaces. The most prominent of these remain Jefferson Cowie
and Joseph Heathcott, whose phrase “smokestack nostalgia” has become the metric by which all
subsequent scholars of deindustrialization orient their arguments.37 The essays in Beyond the Ruins point
out that workers often held contradictory and ambivalent, perhaps even celebratory, views about their
exit from back-breaking industrial labor. Sherry Lee Linkon, drawing from the work of Svetlana Boym,
refers to this ambivalence as “reflective nostalgia,” with which former workers combine feelings of
nostalgia and attachment to their worksites with a critical and nuanced understanding of their own
exploitation. The duality of nostalgia and haunting, as Linkon describes it, creates a paradoxical but selfaware form of remembering.38 This “reflective nostalgia” feels palpable in Beckley. Even if the veteran
miners never worked in this particular mine, their experiences in the late twentieth century resonate
with those who toiled decades before. While guides shed light on the hardship and exploitation
generations of miners endured, they also acknowledge that the work in their lifetimes enabled them to
make a living and support their families. Nowhere is this sense of self-awareness more visible than when
guides turn to the subject of danger.
Danger abounded in every corner of the mine environment. One of the deadliest features of a
coal mine were “kettle bottoms,” petrified tree stumps embedded within the coal seam. As coal was
36 Interview, Leslie Baker and Tony Basconi, April 21, 2022.
37 Jefferson Cowie and Joseph Heathcott, eds., Beyond the Ruins: The Meanings of Industrialization (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2003), 15.
38 Sherry Lee Linkon, The Half-Life of Deindustrialization: Working Class Writing about Economic Restructuring (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018), 35.

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removed, these stumps could dislodge without warning, crushing anything beneath them. Kettle
bottoms killed so many miners that they earned the name “widow makers.” One tour guide claimed that
a miner killed by a kettle bottom would “lay on the damp floor until quitting time so no work time would
be lost in removing the body.”39 From 1897 to 1928, roughly 10,000 coal miners were killed in the state
of West Virginia. Many of these deaths came from kettle bottoms.40
A more pervasive threat to the coal miner’s health was black lung. Many of the labor-saving
devices introduced around mid-century generated excessive amounts of coal dust, which if inhaled
enters the lungs, cakes in, and turns brittle. Pain intensifies over time as the lungs begin to deteriorate
and rip. One tour guide told the story of his father, who operated one of the cutting machines for ten to
twelve years—a job he loved despite the dust. He lost his father and his two older brothers at ages 56
and 60 to black lung. This guide told the story of the first man he ever worked with, who convinced him
to wear a respirator during work. Fellow coworkers would make fun of him, even after retirement,
claiming that the “blacker the lung the bigger the check,” in reference to medical benefits for the ailment
introduced in the 1970s. Yet he remains thankful for putting his health above all else. Black lung,
moreover, remains a problem even in today’s mines. On April 5, 2010, twenty-nine miners were killed in
a coal dust explosion in Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, West Virginia. Autopsies of
several of the victims revealed “extraordinarily high rates of black lung” in many of them. The news
appeared particularly disturbing given many of victims’ relative youth and short duration of
employment.41
The inclusion of such disaster stories in mine tours reveals the transparency that comes with
retired workers running the show, and not the mining companies formerly in charge. Guides at Beckley
39 Earle, “Beckley mine museum depicts conditions in early coal mines.”
40 Tour, Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine.
41 Howard Berkes, “Doctors Confirm Black Lung in Victims of Mine Blast,” NPR, May 17, 2013, accessed on August
30, 2022, Doctors Confirm Black Lung In Victims Of Mine Blast : Shots - Health News : NPR.

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are quick to point out the corporate neglect surrounding the 2010 explosion in Montcoal.42 These stories
resonate with crowds. One guide mentioned that if he does not bring up the black lung, someone in the
audience will ask about it. Sometimes the guides themselves learn that a visitor in the group had a loved
one whom they lost to the occupational disease.43 The stakes of what people discuss and learn on any
given mine tour are thus quite real, quite personal, and not wholly a product of the past. Mining’s
positive and negative effects on the surrounding community remain ever-present. And yet the Beckley
Exhibition Coal Mine persists as a business quite distinct from the surrounding mines. It serves as a
venue to educate visitors on the enduring and important legacy of coal mining in West Virginia, but the
venue has changed from its original contours in fundamental ways. In addition to the introduction of
anachronistic machines in a turn-of-the-century drift mine, no part of the physical mine environment
was left untouched in its postindustrial transformation. In the early 1960s, the Phillips-Sprague mine
vanished, and something altogether new arose in its place—an Exhibition Mine safer, bigger, brighter,
and ultimately more immersive than what hid beneath the “groundhog hole” for half a century.
Access and Transformation
Sources conflict on the exact state of the Phillips-Sprague mine when it was discovered beneath
a slag pile in the late 1950s. We know for certain that in the two years of redevelopment into a tourist
attraction, the ceiling was raised a substantial amount to accommodate tourists. A 1975 brochure
advertised an “authentic view of the low-seam coal mining process, from its earliest manual stages to
present-day mechanized operations.”44 The Exhibition Mine maintains a uniform height of five to six feet,
but this was not always the case. Seam heights in coal mines typically varied from two to twelve feet,
42 On the Pocahontas Exhibition Coal Mine tour, visitors learn of another coal mine explosion on March 13, 1884
that killed 114 miners.
43 Interview, Leslie Baker and Tony Basconi, April 21, 2022.
44 Beckley Exhibition Mine: Beckley, West Virginia, brochure, c. 1975, WVRHC.

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one of the reasons why the thirteen-foot seam in Pocahontas Mine Number 1 achieved such repute.45
The source closest to the mine’s transformation suggests the Sewell seam that ran through the PhillipsSprague mine averaged thirty-two inches in height. Later sources reported the seam ran between
twenty-eight to thirty inches in height. Another noted an “irregular height of two to four feet.” 46
Regardless of the exact height, what would become the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine had been a lowcoal seam of just a few feet in height—typical for mines of this type.
Miners working in low coal spent their shifts crouching and wearing knee pads while they
slushed through mud and water in a space that averaged less than three feet in height. At the mine face,
the miner would do all their cutting, drilling, and shoveling either crouched or laying down on his side.
One miner with 44 years of experience underground spent 11 of them in low coal, doing what he called
“scratch-back mining.” He says, “It’s why my knees hurt and my back got a few scars on it, but old age
don’t help neither.” Miners would often ride scooters, dinner buckets gripped in their teeth, to navigate
the mine more quickly than crawling.47 For obvious reasons, the low-coal setting could not accommodate
a steady stream of tourists, unless they were expected to crawl like the miners. To render the site
accessible, the “roof was blasted back to solid rock” and the “entry passageways enlarged and the roof
raised about two feet.”48 This created the higher and more uniform height of five to six feet that exists
45 100 Years of Southern West Virginia Coal Mining [Millennium Series] (Beckley: Thomson West Virginia/Virginia,
1999), 5, RCPL.
46 Blizzard, “Twice-Robbed Honey”; Earle, “Beckley mine museum depicts conditions in early coal mines”;
Interview, Leslie Baker and Tony Basconi, April 21, 2022; McLean, “Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine,” NRHP Form. One
contradictory source claims the “roof of the Beckley mine was built much higher than the 3-foot seam of coal that
was extracted from it in order to accommodate the horses and oxen used to pull wagons of coal out of the mine.”
If this is true, it is likely only the main entranceway would have reached such heights, with low-coal mining in
additional tunnels remaining low. Nevertheless, the preponderance of evidence suggests this statement is
inaccurate. See Steelhammer, “A Rich Vein of History.”
47 Tour, Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine.
48 Blizzard, “Twice-Robbed Honey”; McLean, “Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine,” NRHP Form. The New River Company
agreed to pay market price for coal extracted during this transformation, which “proved to be several hundred
tons.” See Boothe, “Exhibition Mine Ready for (Tourist) Business.”

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today. The roof expansion likely accounts for a significant chunk of the two years it took the city of
Beckley to redevelop the mine in the early 1960s.
Raising the roof signaled one of many changes the Phillips-Sprague mine underwent in its
conversion into a tourist attraction. Once the roof was blasted to heighten the mine, it was “made secure
with steel expansion bolts, the modern substitute for the white-oak posts of the past.”49 Wooden
timbers that were wedged into place supported mine operations for the first half of the twentieth
century. These pillars proved unreliable and were susceptible to being knocked over by machines or
collapsing under the stress. Mine safety inspectors hailed the invention of roof bolting as the “singlemost important advancement in mine safety ever.”50 During the Exhibition Mine’s conversion, experts
drilled steel roof bolts with an epoxy glue into the ceiling to hold together the strata, one of the features
a foreman checks daily before tourists enter. Roof bolts enabled mines to expand in width up to twenty
feet. With timbers, anything over six feet would collapse under the weight of the roof and cave in.51 The
use of roof bolting enabled the city of Beckley to expand the mine tunnels both upwards and outwards
49 Blizzard, “Twice-Robbed Honey.”
50 100 Years of Southern West Virginia Coal Mining, 26.
51 Tour, Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine.
Figures 47 and 48 – Two examples of low coal mining: on the left, Lindy Coontz at Mine #14, Sharp’s
Knob in Marlinton, WV; on the right, Giffer J. Webb, Jr. in a mine at Montcoal, WV. Photos courtesy of
Mickey Coontz and Homer Webb and Speed Scarboro.

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while ensuring the safety of incoming tourists. This physical expansion created a larger visual platform on
which to display the machines and side shaft demonstrations covered in the tour.
The city lit the mine extensively “with fluorescent fixtures, while the roof [was] sprayed with
aluminum paint to make maximum use of available wattage.” The mantrips used to carry guests into the
mine appear retrofitted for tourist comfort and accessibility. Standard mantrips were much shorter,
requiring miners to crouch or lay down to fit under its hood.52 Transporting the maximum number of
miners possible, not providing comfort, was historically the priority in designing these shuttles. While the
mine has always retained its constant 58-degree temperature, other differences between the active
mine and its tourist exhibition abound. Once the deafening sound of the electric mantrip rumbling over
the tracks comes to a stop, visitors hear silence. In the active mine, the sound of mine carts moving, men
laboring with pickaxe and shovel, and the occasional blasting would have been heard throughout. Rats
no longer scurry to and fro within the mine. Where they might cause a guest to recoil today, miners not
just welcomed them, but fed them scraps of food. If rats fled a certain area, it notified miners of
dwindling oxygen or a looming cave-in.53 Today, the rats are gone. Without these physical changes to the
nature of the 1890 mine, the tourist experience would have been much more cramped, much less
visually stimulating, and ultimately, much more akin to the drudgery, risk, darkness, and monotony of an
actual day in the life of a coal miner—hardly a winning recipe for a tourist site.
52 Interview, Leslie Baker and Tony Basconi, April 21, 2022.
53 Tour, Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine.

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The changes, then, were vital to the tourist site’s enduring success. The city of Beckley has
successfully negated many of the dangers of entering a coal mine while creating a visually immersive
experience out of the darkness. The claim that visitors enter a vintage 1890 mine must be complicated
by the realities of this transformation. It is the miners, not the mine in which they share their stories,
that gives purchase to the site’s legitimacy as an “authentic” experience. The city of Beckley nevertheless
managed to transform an abandoned mine into a safe and immersive space in which these miners could
hold court. This provided both a draw for tourists and a way for a community of retired miners to come
together for a new purpose, the education and inspiration of the tourist public. The success of these
efforts, and the cultural work the oral transmission of these stories provide, demonstrates that
meaningful and important history can come out of a culture of pastiche. The Beckley Exhibition Coal
Mine thrives as a historically altered space. The site offers an anachronistic blend of mining history and
extractive technologies within a space so transformed by redevelopment that it belies actual early-tomid twentieth century mining conditions. And yet, the newly crafted Exhibition Mine nevertheless
succeeds in generating an immersive atmosphere in which working-class stories of danger and hardship
echo with clarity and meaning. Visitors to Beckley from the 1960s onward learned what it meant to be a
Figure 49 – Postcard depicting interior view of unchanged passageway in what would become part
of the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine, c. early 1960s. Note the low ceiling with timbers in the
background. Author’s personal collection.

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coal miner underground, even if in a modified setting. As the century wore on, redevelopers sought ways
to provide a fuller picture of the miners’ family and home lives above ground.
The Coal Camp
The Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine was not the only coal-themed attraction to open in 1962.
Stotesbury, a small mining town ten miles south of Beckley, opened the nation’s first “Coal Town
Museum” on June 30, 1962, just a week after the Exhibition Mine’s own debut. Stotesbury’s population
had diminished in a few short years from 3,000 to 200 residents after Eastern Gas and Fuel Associates
closed its mine there. The community-created museum was housed in the former home of mine
superintendent C. O. Carman, leased from Eastern Gas and Fuel for the nominal fee of $1 per year. The
ten-room museum housed relics from mining days of old, with one room developed into a replica mine.
Former miners from the town were on-hand to offer first-hand knowledge and accounts of their mining
experiences.54 Perhaps because of the tourist competition from Beckley, Stotesbury failed. The museum
offered as much education and nostalgia as its counterpart, but lacked the sense of adventure and
immersion a trip into the Beckley mine offered. Even though miners on-site in Stotesbury had stories to
tell just as compelling as those in Beckley, the setting proved to be the difference in one’s success and
the other’s failure.
Beckley assumed the mantle from Stotesbury in the 1990s with the creation of a coal camp in
New River Park to surround and contextualize its mine. The first structure the community added above
ground was a Youth Museum, opened in April 1986. Disposed CSX boxcars frame the Main Gallery with a
caboose added for office space. Shortly thereafter, the idea of a “heritage village” came to fruition in the
form of the Mountain Homestead. A disassembled and rebuilt log house, among other structures,
54 William C. Blizzard, “Struggle in Stotesbury,” Charleston Gazette, June 24, 1962, in the Museums… Coal Town…
Raleigh vertical file, WVSA.

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“replicate life on the West Virginia frontier” just behind the Youth Museum.55 Building on this
momentum, the Exhibition Mine slowly recreated a coal camp community building by building. “These
old coal towns are fading away,” then director Renda Morris noted, “We’re not going to have them any
longer. So we’re really trying to preserve that.”56 At the mine tour’s end, the mantrip carrying visitors
exits a second shaft before wrapping around a hill to view a collection of buildings, including the
company store where they had paid admission. Having learned about the miners’ experiences
underground, they are now encouraged to walk amidst the buildings and learn about their lives
aboveground in a new light. Developers had disassembled and rebuilt many of the buildings, saving
them from almost certain demolition in their original towns. Others such as the company store were
rebuilt, but all were altered in significant ways.
The first building, opened to the public on March 29, 1991, was a three-room Coal Company
House (1925-1940) once owned by the New River Company. Moved from the nearby coal town of
55 “Celebrating 20 Years of Growth: Youth Museum History,” 1997, in the Museums – Youth Museum Southern WV
vertical file, WVSA.
56 Mannix Porterfield, “Coal-town replica to open for a day,” The Register-Herald, December 1, 1995, in the Beckley
Exhibition Coal Mine vertical file, WVSA.
Figure 50 – View of the Company Store, which houses a visitor’s center, museum, and gift shop. To the immediate
right can be seen the church and Youth Museum; to the left the entrance to the mine. Photo courtesy of author.

166
Sprague, this home and ones like it would have been rented by miners from their employers.57 Next
came the Superintendent’s House, dismantled and reconstructed in painstaking detail by photograph.
The house once “reigned on a hill above Robert C. Byrd Drive, overlooking the old tipple that had stood
where Blockbuster Video and the former Wal-Mart stores were built” in the former New River Company
coal town of Skelton.58 The three-story house opened in New River Park on June 20, 1995. Instead of
furnishing the home’s upstairs bedrooms, the restoration committee converted each room into
representations of a post office, barber shop, and doctor’s offices from the 1920s and 1930s. “We
thought this would give visitors a greater sense of life in general in those days,” said Renda Morris.59 The
Exhibition Coal Mine also added to its grounds a church from Pemberton, West Virginia and a two-room
schoolhouse built in 1925 from Helen, West Virginia.60
In 2008, the Exhibition Coal Mine built a new $3.5 million visitor center within a replicated
Company Store. “The company store was a big part of the coal town,” Morris said. “We couldn’t bring in
an authentic building. So we simulated one. This building keeps our heritage alive.” The Company Store
replaced an older building that “did not fit well with the historical theme” of their recreated coal camp.61
The building includes a visitor’s center, gift shop, and upstairs museum. The Company Store rounded out
the coal camp project, which consolidated a variety of endangered buildings from surrounding coal
towns in West Virginia. The coal camp reinforced the logic that visitors were traveling back in time to a
57 “Coal Company House added to Exhibition Coal Mine,” The Fayette Tribune, March 28, 1991, in the Beckley
Exhibition Coal Mine vertical file, WVSA. This house, also known as a “Jenny Lind,” is often staffed by guides, some
of whom were daughters of former coal miners.
58 Porterfield, “Coal-town replica to open for a day.”
59 Bev Davis, “The Superintendent’s House: Grand opening set June 20,” The Register-Herald, June 14, 1995, in the
Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine vertical file, WVSA.
60 Jill Zegeer, “Moving Day: Old Pemberton Methodist Church arrives at new home—with a few problems,” The
Register-Herald, December 1, 1995; “Beaver school donates old maps to project, Raleigh Explorer, December 2,
1997, in the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine vertical file, WVSA.
61 Charlotte Ferrell Smith, “Exhibition mine to get new draw: Beckley tourist attraction adds company store to
rebuilt coal camp,” Charleston Gazette-Mail, April 2, 2008, in the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine vertical file, WVSA.
The building was initially named the Rahall Company Store as a nod to U.S. Representative Nick Rahall who
secured funding for it.

167
turn-of-the-century drift mine, despite its temporal and spatial changes underground. The Coal Camp,
more than the underground experience, gives Beckley its purchase as a turn-of-the-century themed
attraction. Dates of original construction varied by building, but all were early-century structures, and
collectively reinforced an early-century aesthetic that held visual appeal as a place to which visitors could
escape for a few hours.
Achieving repeat visitation is a challenge all tourist sites face. Providing new experiences,
whether different tours, rotating exhibits, or new structures on-site are feats constantly discussed by
those running these sites. The gradual addition of the coal camp and its many buildings through the
1990s and 2000s gave the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine a steady stream of “new” sites to offer guests.
The coal camp also enhanced the site’s visual appeal by bringing the experience aboveground. The
numerous buildings offer a more visual canvas on which to diversify tourist experiences. In December,
for example, the site decorates and lights the buildings for the holidays, encouraging guests to visit the
site in its unique and temporary setting. If the coal camp addition achieved practical results from a
visitation standpoint, it also saved many buildings from almost certain neglect and demolition. The site’s
shared artificiality remains almost certainly preferable to the buildings’ individual destruction. Coal
mining still persisted in southern West Virginia in the late twentieth century. But the way of life
embodied by coal towns had long vanished, preserved only by the mish-mash of buildings consolidated
around the Exhibition Coal Mine. Despite the geographic, spatial, and historical specificity lost with each
buildings’ relocation and reconstruction, one would be hard-pressed to find a better representation of a
coal camp in the vicinity. That is not to say, however, that other sites do not exist.
The 1990s saw a flurry of regional and national heritage designations to codify and preserve at
least some of the built environment from the coal industry’s heyday. The Coal Heritage Trail, initially
stretching 88-miles from Beckley to Bluefield (near the Pocahontas Exhibition Coal Mine) became a
National Scenic Byway in 1994. It has since greatly expanded. The trail eventually fell within the

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parameters of a multi-county National Coal Heritage Area in 1996, one of now dozens of National
Heritage Areas that dot the nation’s landscape.62 Incorporating neglected and overlooked sites within a
broader rubric of regional heritage that included established attractions such as in Beckley proved a
difficult, and ongoing, task. “We’re having difficulty in finding sites that are still intact,” stated Jeffrey
Harpold, an executive director of the National Coal Heritage Area. “Concerned about liability, coal
companies have torn down tipples, processing plants, and other structures.” Natural disasters
exacerbated the problem, with about thirty percent of inventoried buildings along the trail destroyed by
flooding in July 2001 and May 2002. Residents have also played a part in the loss, with many purchasing
old company houses and transforming them “from uniform rows of white wooden squares into a
kaleidoscope of bright colors” amid other changes. “Today, the exhibition mine’s reconstructed version
provides a better glimpse into real coal-camp life.” Congressman Nick Rahall, instrumental in securing
federal funding for these designations, believed the heritage development “must be done not only for
educational purposes, but also for the potential regional economic benefits this type of historic
preservation may hold.”63
Planners have achieved this in part by merging industrial heritage with the region’s wellestablished and burgeoning outdoor adventure tourism. “We’re trying to give people who are coming to
Southern West Virginia for whitewater rafting, hunting, fishing, or ATV riding a reason to bring along
their families and maybe stay an extra day.”64 The redesignation and upgrade of New River Gorge to the
status of National Park and Preserve in 2020 certainly aided this effort. Established in 1978 as a national
62 Greg Jordan, “Half-million-dollar grant OK’d for Coal Heritage Trail center,” Bluefield Daily Telegraph, March 7,
1996; National Coal Heritage Area, 2006 Annual Report (Beckley: Coal Heritage Highway Authority, 2006) in the
National Coal Heritage Area vertical file, WVSA.
63 “Trail developers see tourism in state’s coalfields, The Journal [Martinsburg, WV], no date; Shannon Martz, “W.
Va’s coal roots get new life: Region designated a ‘Heritage Area’,” Huntington Herald-Dispatch, October 7, 1994, in
the Trails… Coal Heritage vertical file, WVSA.
64 Rick Steelhammer, “On the History Trail: Bluefield-to-Beckley heritage drive seems to be catching on with
tourists,” Charleston Gazette-Mail, October 10, 2004, in the Trails… Coal Heritage vertical file, WVSA.

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river, the gorge through which New River meanders was once dotted with coal camps. Thousands of coal
miners and their families established narrow communities, hemmed in by the river on one side, the
gorge the other. Almost all have vanished—reclaimed by the nature that now entices so many. One
remains. How might Beckley’s recreated coal camp stack up against the ruins of an actual coal town,
obscured by a century of decay and ruin, but extant nonetheless?
The Ruins of Nuttallburg
Nuttallburg served as a riverside coal mining town from 1870 until 1958. The mine changed
ownership repeatedly, with Henry Ford operating it from 1920 to 1928. Although the mine operated for
85 years and would have changed and developed over time, many of the surviving structures date to the
Ford years when production modernized. The most prominent of these structures is the 1923-1924
tipple and old railways used to load and ship out the extracted ore. Just below the ridge and along the
riverbank runs an active CSX railway parallel to the old rail lines. Frequent passage of trains reminds
visitors of industry’s ongoing presence. Attached to the tipple is an elevated button-and-rope conveyor
that crawls 1,385 feet up the gorge to the mine’s 1925-26 head house halfway up the mountain. The
higher altitude of coal seams within the gorge often required extensive conveyor systems to transport
the ore downward for sorting and shipment. Intrepid visitors can also explore the overgrown ruins of 46
of the original 80 coke ovens. Further still stand the remains of two dozen homes that once comprised
the suburb Seldom Seen. At the turn of the century, Nuttallburg was a bustling but racially segregated
community with schools, churches, a doctor, blacksmith, carpenter, and company store.65 Today, it
remains almost hidden, a small blip on New River Gorge park maps accessible only by a gravel and
65 Rita Walsh, David N. Fuerst, and Richard W. Segars, “Nuttallburg Coal Mining Complex and Town Historic
District,” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior,
National Park Service, March 2005), accessed on September 1, 2022, Nuttallburg-coal-mining-complex-townhistoric-district.pdf (wvculture.org).The National Park Service acquired the mining complex from the Nuttall Estate
in 1998. See also Michael Justice, Abandoned Coal Towns of Southern West Virginia (Charleston: Arcadia
Publishing, 2021), 64-72.

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pothole-ridden road. Even from a nearby scenic overlook, the town is nearly invisible save for the faint
red line of the tipple’s conveyor snaking up the gorge.
Both Beckley and Nuttallburg inform our perceptions of industry, but in distinct ways. The ruins
at Nuttallburg convey a sense of history dating back to the 1920s, when Ford modernized the town.
Walking about the site, one absorbs its narrow topography, hemmed in by both river and gorge, in
making a clear mental map of how coal towns were built and functioned around the extraction and
processing of ore. And yet it remains largely inaccessible; the town is off the beaten path and overgrown,
with roads passable only by foot. The Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine, on the other hand, serves as an
anchor of the National Coal Heritage Area and attracts upwards of 50,000 tourists per year. In a region
with hundreds of closed mine portals, it is far from a coincidence that the one selected for
redevelopment rests within a city park near the geographic center of town.
The fact that developers discovered the abandoned mine portal within their new municipal park
grounds was fortuitous not because it enabled them to create a mine tour, but because it allowed them
to do so in a central location. It is likely the citizens of Beckley and its surrounding region would have
redeveloped another drift mine at a later point in the century, given the hundreds of closed mine portals
that remain hidden behind underbrush and vegetation within the mountainous landscape. The closed
mine portal at Nuttallburg, for instance, is one such example. The Exhibition Coal Mine’s distinction
Figures 51 and 52 – Views of Nuttallburg 1923-1924 tipple and attached 1,385-foot button-and-rope conveyor. Photos courtesy of author.

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stems not from any unique quality, but from its central location within a city that has risen up around it
in the ensuing century since it closed in 1911.
Nuttallburg, meanwhile, reinforces an important point about the nation’s history of mining and
company towns: this industry often operated in remote and inaccessible locations. This remoteness was
a product of geology, in part, but also stemmed from the absolute control it provided companies
overseeing their workforces. The Phillips-Sprague mine was not run by a company, but by a family in its
early years. It is likely that NPS will eventually render Nuttallburg more accessible as it enhances the still
nascent infrastructure following its national park designation. The ruins of the company town, however,
will always lay dormant within miles of reclaimed forest, standing watch as white-water rafters, trains,
and time pass them by. The consequent isolation informs the visitor experience, providing a more
sobering look at industry’s past, but one in which exploration of the ruins is possible without supervision.
In Beckley, although one journeys underground, supervision remains paramount. Each experience
presents a different layer of industry’s historicization, and the entertainment and fulfillment derived
from each visit generates in unique ways.
Those who have developed and maintained the Beckley attraction have crafted a formula that
balances safety, accessibility, and immersion. In the process, much of the history it seeks to preserve,
whether the varied eras of mining technology or the buildings transported from coal camps, have
blended into a pastiche of history lacking the specificity seen at Nuttallburg. Far from an indictment,
however, this form of heritage has proved successful, particularly in its management of otherwise unsafe
spaces. Abandoned portals abound throughout the region, inviting the occasional break-in, and
exploring remote places such as Nuttallburg carries its own set of risks. Collectively, the Exhibition Coal
Mines at Pocahontas and Beckley, as well as the Nuttallburg Mining Complex, present a varied and
complex legacy of coal mining in West Virginia. Each function as postindustrial tourist sites in unique
ways, but all share the commonality of their historicized presentation. The extent to which the images

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they convey ameliorates or obscures our understanding of present-day industry varies, but all represent
success stories for the communities that established and maintain them.
The Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine highlights several important factors for those operating tourist
sites to consider: a centralized, safe, and accessible location, as well as the creation of new features to
encourage repeat visitation, as seen with the gradual construction of the aboveground coal camp. If
these issues serve as hallmarks for the tourist industry, they are not without their exceptions. The next
chapter will reveal an underground labyrinth of salt pillars that sits well outside the downtown confines
of its respective city. Aboveground, a standalone visitor center welcomes tourists in a much subtler
manner than the recreated coal camp in Beckley. More importantly, the separation of production from
the tourist experience takes on a new twist. The “groundhog hole” in Beckley’s budding municipal park
had laid dormant for half a century when developers discovered it in the late 1950s. What happens,
however, if the mine never shuts down in the first place? What new wrinkles are added to the
redevelopment process and physical transformation of the space when resource extraction remains
ongoing? It is to this story, and the surprising quest to separate tourism from active production, that we
now turn.

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Chapter 5: The Separation of Production in Kansas’s Underground City
Ben Blanchard was searching for oil. He stood on the flat, windy plains of South-Central Kansas
on September 27, 1887 as a drill plumbed the depths for sign of the resource. He hoped to increase land
values as he organized and laid out of the town of South Hutchinson, just across the banks of the
Arkansas River from the city of Hutchinson. Blanchard did not find oil. Instead, he stumbled upon one of
the richest veins of salt in the world.1 Today, the Salt Discovery Well where Blanchard first struck “white
gold” rests under a wooden pavilion amidst the open fields and highways of South Hutchinson.2 The
modesty and solitude of this pavilion belies an underground city teeming with activity 650 feet below. A
far cry from the low-coal seams of two to three feet found in Beckley, the salt deposits sitting beneath
Hutchinson can reach a thickness in the hundreds of feet. Excavation of this space over the past century
has fashioned a checkerboard-patterned labyrinth of 40-square-foot salt pillars, creating space for an
eclectic array of activities in unused sections of the mine. Today, visitors can hear the dull rumble of
blasting from afar as they journey through a tangle of exhibits underground. Whether a 6,000-pound
block of salt, historic mining equipment and old rails used to extract and transport the resource, or
George Clooney’s Batman suit and other Hollywood memorabilia, curiosities abound within the deep
passages of one of the 8 Wonders of Kansas.3
This chapter asks how and why Hutchinson’s premiere tourist attraction came into being. It tells
the story through the lens of an unlikely trio of individuals who, through shared necessity, found a way to
transform Kansas’s underground salt strata into a space useful to their respective institutions. Key to this
1
Frank Vincent, “History of Salt Discovery and Production in Kansas, 1887-1915,” in Kansas Historical Collections,
14 (1918): 358-59, in the History of the Carey Salt Company binder, Reno County Historical Society, Hutchinson,
Kansas [hereafter RCHS].
2
Jay Smith, Executive Director of the Reno County Museum, worked for eighteen months in 1998 and 1999 to
fundraise and devise plans for a site update at the Salt Discovery Well. A stone marker had been placed as early as
1939. Reno County Museum, “Director’s Report,” June 10, 1999, in the 1999 Board File, RCHS.
3 Corbin Lee, “The 8 Wonders of Kansas, Explained,” The Travel, September 14, 2022, accessed March 10, 2024,
The 8 Wonders Of Kansas, Explained (thetravel.com).

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strategic partnership was the most ambitious redevelopment project in the story of Rust World—the
sinking of a 650-foot shaft in 2004-2005 for nonindustrial purposes. Hutchinson’s manifestation of
“boom” reemerged in the twenty-first century with the dynamic excavation of its new shaft, no less
ambitious than its original one dug 82 years prior. Crews digging both shafts in 1922 and 2004 employed
radically different, but equally ingenious methods to traverse the water-bearing strata of this vast,
vertical space. As mining operations expanded horizontally across miles of excavated earth through the
twentieth century, the industrial space took on the identity of a seemingly endless labyrinth of salt
pillars. Sinking a second shaft enabled the navigation of this maze by tourists, who could now descend
directly into the oldest portions of the mine excavated in the 1930s and 1940s. Those working to grant
this access achieved this out of shared necessity, but also due to longstanding interest in salt mine tours
and institutional know-how on the practices and maintenance standards for working underground.
This chapter thus relies on the institutional archive of the major players in Hutchinson’s
underground transformation and includes the voices of two figures central to its success: Jay Smith of
the Reno County Historical Society and Lee Spence of Underground Vaults & Storage. Their work, in
concert with Max Liby of the Hutchinson Salt Company, effectively severed industrial and nonindustrial
activity underground after almost a century in which these lines had been blurred. The salt company had
offered industrial tours for much of the twentieth century, but this severance created an entirely new
tourist experience, both in more varied content and in more comfortable presentation. The history of
salt extraction is but one of many exhibits found in this space, some completely unrelated to industrial
activity. This transformation added a veneer of entertainment and fun to an otherwise drab space—a
feat reinforced in recent years as those running the attraction seek new ways to engage a broader
audience. This story, buried hundreds of feet beneath the Great Plains, reinforces the centrality of the
separation of production in postindustrial tourist pursuits.

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The Shaft, 1922-1923
By 1900, there were fifty salt companies in the Midwest, with five operating in Hutchinson alone.
One of these was the Carey Salt Company, established on April 25, 1901 as a branch of Emerson Carey’s
ice and coal ventures. Carey dug a 750-foot well to furnish the brine for the evaporating process and
used exhaust steam from his ice machines to heat the pans. Production increased in the ensuing years.
In June 1910, the budding tycoon opened a cutting-edge, fireproof salt plant made of steel and cement
east of the city limits. Often referred to as the “most modern salt plant in the world,” the new
Evaporating Plant helped turn the tide against the existing salt trust, headed by Joy Morton, president of
the Morton Salt Company in Chicago.4
In 1922, Carey announced plans for a first in Hutchinson: a rock
salt mine. Work on sinking the shaft began in June of that year and took approximately a year and
$250,000 to complete. Around 60 feet down, the shaft penetrated a water-bearing strata of sand and
shale, requiring a professional deep-sea diving team on site to conduct the excavating. The divers used
high-pressure jets of water to chip away at the shale and earth before finally passing through the waterloaded strata at 130 feet. By December, excavators had reached their first vein of pure rock salt at 400
feet, which they cut through with electrical machinery and hauled out in big blocks. The shaft ended at a
depth of 645 feet, enabling access to the richest vein of salt in the entire field. The mine was dedicated
on June 23, 1923. President Warren G. Harding happened to be passing through Hutchinson during his
transcontinental tour. After his speech at the nearby State Fair Grounds, hundreds flocked to the
ceremony. By midcentury, three salt companies ran evaporating plants in Hutchinson, but only Carey had
a salt mine.5
4
Lynn Ledeboer and Myron Marcotte, Kansas Tycoon Emerson Carey: Building an Empire from Coal, Ice and Salt
(Charleston: The History Press, 2019), 37-40, 59,60; “History of the Carey Evaporating Plant,” in the History of the
Carey Salt Company Binder, RCHS.
5
“Sixty Years Ago” in Carey Communiqué, 3 (June/July 1983): 1, in the RCHS Photos… Copies Book 2 Binder, RCHS;
John Watson, “Mine Tapping Rich Beds Under City of Hutchinson Capable of Producing 1,000 Tons of Salt Daily,”
The Wichita Eagle, May 13, 1954, in the Carey Salt Company Clippings – April 1954 to January 1958 Binder, RCHS.

176
Below Kansas, salt beds run for 235 miles long, 120 miles wide, and reach up to 450 feet in
thickness. Production in this range continues today. Given the mine’s depth, miners created a
checkerboard pattern underground to prevent collapse. Known as the “room and pillar” mining system,
extraction continues to take place by leaving behind large square caverns alternating with pillars of salt
which support the earth above. The size of the supports depends on the depth and thickness of the
deposit. In this case, miners leave behind forty-square-foot pillars to hold up the ceiling at a height of
about ten feet. Electric lighting systems illuminate much underground, at least compared to the cramped
quarters in coal mines, and a constant circulation of air maintains a temperature of about 68 degrees
year-round.6
In its heyday, the output of the Carey Salt Mine reached 1,000 tons of salt per day.
Midcentury estimates suggested this amount could be removed each day for 100 years without
exhaustion. Other estimates suggest Kansas’s salt reserves could supply the United States at its thenpresent rate of consumption anywhere from 250,000 to 500,000 years. Hutchinson Salt Company, the
present-day successor to the Carey Salt Mine and the only active salt mine remaining in Reno County,
extracts more than 500,000 tons of rock salt annually.7 Because of impurities, rock salt was and
continues to be mostly used for highway snow and ice control and as cattle feed.8
Salt and coal miners shared much of the same machinery and extraction methods despite their
different working conditions. Miners undercut and blast out large chunks of rock salt from the wall,
loading and transporting them in railcars to the skip elevator. Once arrived at the shaft, these cars are
turned completely over and emptied by a rotary dumper into the hoist and raised to the “breaker”
house sitting aboveground. There, salt rocks weighing upwards of 500 pounds are crushed into pieces
6
“Hutchinson: The Salt Cellar of America,” in Dispatcher (May 1957), in the Carey Salt Company Clippings – April
1954 to January 1958 Binder, RCHS.
7 Catherine L. Ronck and William R. Price, “Revealing ‘Salt City’s’ Geological and Mining Heritage at Strataca,” in
Great Plains Research 29, no. 2 (Fall 2019): 138.
8 United States Geological Survey, “Mineral Commodity Summaries 2024, US Geological Survey, 2024, accessed
March 9, 2024, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2024 (usgs.gov).

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before they are hoisted by chain bucket elevator to the top of the facility for screening and grading, after
which they are dumped into storage bins. An electric conveyor transports the salt from bins to freight
cars, with the product inspected, automatically weighed, and sacked en route. The total distance from
the elevator shaft’s greatest depth underground to the top of the breaker house was “785 feet, which
compares to a 78-story building.” By midcentury, Carey Salt employed about fifty workers at the facility,
but only thirteen were needed below ground due to mechanization.9
Transportation of Salt and People
The Carey Salt Company did not hide these marvels of production from the public. Industrial
tours of both the aboveground Evaporating Plant and Carey Salt Mine were part of a complex public
relations and advertising interface as early as the 1920s.10 The United States Travel Service’s 1962
volume of Plant Tours in the United States listed two options for those visiting Hutchinson: J. S. Dillon &
Sons Office and Warehouse, which handled food products, and the Farmers Cooperative Commission
Company Elevator, a half-mile long grain storage elevator with milling and baking laboratories included.11
Other factories were known to offer more informal tours. Carey’s Evaporating Plant hosted an open
house, for example, in 1968. The event lasted over three hours and welcomed some 400 visitors. A script
written by Bill Tucker, Chairman of the Open House Committee, suggested tour guides remind visitors
that “for the next 40 to 45 minutes we will be in areas that are noisy and, at times, it will be hard to
hear.” After several pages of script detailing the minutiae of the evaporating process, Tucker reminded
9 Watson, “Mine Tapping Rich Beds”; John Cummins, “Mine Shaft Sinks into Layer of Salt 300 Feet Thick,” The
Wichita Eagle, February 19, 1955, in the Carey Salt Company Clippings – April 1954 to January 1958 Binder, RCHS.
10 A booklet published for “Carey-ized” dealers and salesmen of Carey products included “A Trip Through the Carey
[Evaporating] Plant and Mine” alongside an extensive list of advertising and public relations methods. These
methods included, but were not limited to, newspaper and billboard advertising, direct mail campaigning, fair and
food show displays, theatre advertising, etc. See “Carey-ized Merchandizing – The Treasure Chest of Ideas,”
undated, in the RCHS Photos – Copies – Book 2 Binder, RCHS.
11 Plant Tours in the United States (Washington, DC: United States Travel Service, 1962), 16.

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his guides to say, “And the next time you buy salt, we hope you will pick the one with the Carey name on
it.”12
Factory tours, whether in Hershey or Hutchinson, were quite common in the first half of the
twentieth century. It was much less common, as we have seen in Beckley, for the public to have access
underground, but the Carey Salt Company made this possible from the beginning. Billy Andlauer, a
Kansas City representative of Pathé News, covered the dedication in 1923, producing a reel that the
company incorporated into its regular news reel released on June 27, just four days after the ceremony.
The entire proceedings were shown to “thousands of salt users” in “picture houses throughout Kansas,
Missouri, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Iowa and as far east as St. Louis, Cleveland and Cincinnati.” In addition to
the speeches, this reel showcased views of operations — “some down in the shaft, and others showing
the machinery in the [aboveground] superstructure at work.” The most fascinating feature of the entire
film, one article noted, was a “close-up of one of the huge electric hoists dumping its cargo of rock salt
into the feed bin at the top of the superstructure.”13 The site’s verticality, equivalent in height to that of a
skyscraper buried underground, riveted viewers from its inception.
As miners extracted ton after ton of rock salt—up to 1,000 tons a day—the growing
checkerboard layout and seemingly endless scope of the mine enabled visitation in greater numbers. As
early as 1927, visitors began descending the shaft to tour the mine. Visits could be booked for certain
mornings, with occasional unscheduled tours, while the company reserved afternoons for blasting. For
safety reasons, no salt was hauled when people were riding up or down the shaft. As early as 1927, a
12 “Evaporating Plant Tour with Description and Route Map,” 1968, 1, 6, in the History of the Carey Salt Company
Binder, RCHS; “Evaporating Plant Holds Open House,” in the RCHS Photos – Copies – Book 2 Binder, RCHS.
13 “Movie Man on Job,” in Salt & Pep 4, no. 4 (July 1923): 3, in the RCHS Photos – Copies – Book 2 Binder, RCHS.
The Pathé newsreel was the first, but far from the last camera to capture activity underground. Around
midcentury, filmmakers produced several educational films depicting operations underground. See, for example,
Independent Salt Mine, Kanopolis, Kansas, c. 1950s, Kansas Memory, Kansas State Historical Society, Independent
Salt mine, Kanopolis, Kansas - Kansas Memory; see also Salt Mine Operations, c. 1950s, DVD, shown and sold at
Strataca: Kansas Underground Salt Museum.

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man-cage hung beneath the skips, likely added specifically for guests. The company did not charge
admission but structured the tour so that visitors always ended in a room with a Carey Salt Company
trade show display, an important marketing tool by which Carey Salt sought to transform visitors into
buyers. After descending 645 feet, visitors were ushered aboard a specially designed “man car” with a
roof and heavy grilled doors before traversing down a mile-long haulageway. Guests then de-trained at
an active worksite where they watched miners undercut and prep the mine face for blasting later each
day. After stopping by the trade show display, visitors were often served lunch while sitting on powder
boxes. Former miners would escort groups through the mine, often using loudspeakers so guests could
hear their voices over the sounds of machines at work.14
The tours grew in popularity through the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s apart from a stoppage during
World War II. Student groups comprised a significant portion of the visitors but were far from the only
demographic to attend. Teachers, geologists, rotary and other civic clubs, and associations of all stripes
and colors booked trips to either tour the mine or host events underground, often with little to do about
the mine itself. One retired miner recalled that near the end of each school year they would have
“almost daily a group of students from some school.” One local wholesale company hosted an evening
event underground with 600 people, “making by comparison the handling of children an easy task” with
just one hoist to get the people in and out of the mine. One year during the week of the Kansas State
Fair (held in Hutchinson), so many visitors arrived that “we hoisted only two loads of salt [all day], even
taking visitors up and down during the lunch hour.”15
14 “E. Lawson May, “Salt Mine Adding New Cars, Handle Summer Visitors,” March 23, 1961, in the Carey Empire
Clippings – Jan. 1, 1958 to December 9, 1963, RCHS; “Lunch… in a salt mine,” Carey Salt Company, 1950, in the
RCHS Photos – Copies – Book 2 Binder, RCHS; Barbara C. Ulrich, The Carey Salt Mine, Images of America Series
(Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2008), 93, 96-97.
15 B. J. Pallister, 40 Years of Salt Mining, 1972, 10-11, in the History of the Carey Salt Company Binder, RCHS. For a
few examples of typical tours groups, see Jan Goble, “Students Visit Carey Mine,” The Hutchinson News, March 7,
1958, in the Carey Empire Clippings – Jan. 1, 1958 to December 9, 1963 Binder, RCHS; “Teachers on KABIE Tour of

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Strain on the miners’ patience and the company’s productive capacity reached new heights in
the late 1950s. Through the earlier decades, production had been quite seasonal, with the company
doing little rock salt business during the summer. In 1961, the company advertised a tourist season from
March 1 to November 1, giving its workers time to extract the resource uninterrupted when in greatest
demand for icy winter roads. The company had offered tours two days a week through 1960, but upped
the total to three in 1961 as demand surged. At one point, Carey Salt agreed to expand the size of groups
allowed underground after callers complained of a two-year waiting list. To enable more efficient
handling of larger groups, the company commissioned three twenty-five-capacity “man-cars” specifically
for tours in 1961. One Carey official quipped, “Maybe we should quit the salt business and go into the
tourist business full time.”
16 Eventually, the demand became too much. Just a few months after the
company had commissioned the new “man cars,” it ended public access. In May 1961, a newspaper
announced that the company’s operation costs “had become too high” and it was forced to end the
tours “in the interests of a more efficient mine operation.”17 Visitor safety and liability concerns played a
part in the decision, as did certain production changes. Construction of an aboveground storage shed
helped level out the seasonal nature of operations, making the summer months less conducive to tourist
access. The introduction of a continuous, mechanized belt line made starting and stopping production
for guests to use the shaft economically infeasible. For over three decades, Carey Salt Company gave
tours to an average of 9,000 visitors per year, all while maintaining profitable production of rock salt
underground.18 Without a dedicated tourist shaft, however, public access ended in the 1960s.
Hutchinson,” The Hutchinson News-Herald, June 19, 1954; “Kansas Attorneys Eat Lunch 645 Feet Underground,”
The Wichita Eagle, in the Carey Salt Company Clippings – April 1954 to January 1, 1958 Binder, RCHS.
16 May, “Salt Mine Adding New Cars”; “She Wanted Mine Tour,” The Hutchinson News-Herald, July 29, 1954, in the
Carey Salt Company Clippings – April 1954 to January 1, 1958 Binder, RCHS; Ulrich, The Carey Salt Mine, 102.
17 E. Lawson May, “Salt Mine Tours Halted,” May 25, 1961, in the Carey Empire Clippings – Jan. 1, 1958 to
December 9, 1963, RCHS.
18 “Kansas Underground Salt Museum Basic Assumptions,” 3, RCHS.

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Hollywood Comes to Kansas
The salt mine nevertheless remained an expansive and growing labyrinth, with excavated rooms
lying dormant and unused. The space around midcentury quickly became a beehive of activity. Through
the 1950s, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) had been searching for suitable places to store
radioactive waste. On March 8, 1959, a local paper wrote, “Hutchinson will take a big but cautious step
into the atomic age Monday.” The Carey Salt Company had contracted with the AEC to provide the space
and experimental facilities required for field testing whether radioactive waste could be stored safely
within natural salt formations. In an unused portion of the mine, scientists from the AEC’s Oak Ridge
National Laboratory conducted countless tests, using simulated waste materials and producing heat by
electricity to gauge salt’s ability to withstand toxic waste. The tests continued through 1967, but
ultimately the project met with enough public and scientific opposition that the AEC left Kansas in 1972
and built its waste storage facility in New Mexico instead.19
At the same time, another tenant was moving in as well. During World War II, Nazis had
stockpiled stolen European historical treasures in Austrian salt mines for safekeeping until war’s end. As
the world moved into the atomic age, memories of this practice lingered alongside growing anxieties of a
potential nuclear holocaust. Underground Vaults & Storage Inc., established on June 11, 1959, grew out
of this cold war context and the vacant salt caverns resting beneath Hutchinson. Advertised as “a
hydrogen bomb haven” and “a cold war real estate bonanza,” the space provided theftproof and
bombproof storage facilities. UVS subleased the space from the Carey Salt Company, occupying 130
acres of the bays closest to the skip hoist. Slowly but surely, companies across the nation began
relocating valuable and sensitive materials to the Great Plains, where they could be stored in rooms with
19 “Atomic Age Comes to Hutchinson,” The Hutchinson News, March 8, 1959, in the Carey Empire Clippings – Jan. 1,
1958 to December 9, 1963, RCHS; Ulrich, The Carey Salt Mine, 105, 120.

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no moisture and constant, year-round temperatures.20 Areas of the rock salt mine that had laid dormant
for decades were once again drawing a profit, albeit in far different fashion.
Within its first years of operation, UVS established secure galleries for storage of records ranging
from private industry and commercial banks to medical and cultural institutions. Of particular note were
the Hollywood studios who salted away original copies of their films. A Los Angeles Times article noted,
for instance, that underneath Hutchinson one could find “the original film negative for The Wizard of Oz;
a collection of New York newspapers dating back to the assassination of Pres. Lincoln; secret U.S. Gov’t
documents; and thousands of medical research biopsies encased in wax.” Wandering through the salt
bays revealed familiar titles: Gone with the Wind, Ben Hur, Star Wars, and TV episodes of MASH resided
near silent movies. “In the last two months alone,” the writer noted, “20th Century Fox delivered 22
truckloads of film.”21 For decades, UVS employees shared the single skip hoist with the miners,
transporting themselves and the sensitive documents they preserved up the lone shaft. As the tourist
presence vanished in the 1960s, the Carey Salt Company had still managed to diversify use of its extant
space, creating a veritable underground city in the process.
Calls to tour the mines did not stop in the intervening years. Even before the Carey Salt
Company’s informal tours had ended, the Chamber of Commerce was exploring ways to make the setup
permanent. On April 11, 1958, the local paper published the article “’Tourist’ Shaft Proposed for Mine.”
At an approximate cost of $250,000, the idea was little more than a pipe dream, but 1958 marked the
earliest mention of constructing an entirely new shaft dedicated for tourists, which would “provide a
20 James Ritch, “You Can Rent a Salt Mine,” Chicago Sunday Tribune, April 1961; Frank K. Tiffany, “Firm Leases
Kansas Salt Mine for Record Storage Center,” September 24, 1961, in the Carey Empire Clippings – Jan. 1, 1958 to
December 9, 1963, RCHS.
21 Roxana Hegeman, “A Warehouse that’s so deep, it’s not in Kansas Anymore,” The Los Angeles Times, May 7,
2000, in the History of the Carey Salt Company Binder, RCHS.

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plush ride down for Kansas visitors, and would free the salt firm’s commercial elevator for raising salt.”22
Nothing came of the proposal, but the seeds had been planted. A local article published on June 13,
1981, again signaled that “renewed interest has breathed life into the old idea to drill” a separate shaft
into the Carey Salt Mines “for a tourist attraction.”23 Although receiving widespread support at the time,
the project was shelved as the Chamber of Commerce instead developed the Discovery Center and
Cosmosphere in Hutchinson. On June 15, 1981, a follow-up publication announced that “complications
have developed in the renewed effort” to dig a tourist shaft. Cathy Kruzic, director of the Convention
Visitors Bureau, stated that the current mine owner, Processed Minerals Inc. found “problems with the
plan, but did not elaborate on them.” She surmised that these stemmed from alleged safety hazards.24
In 1985, a delegation from the Chamber of Commerce traveled to Chicago to view the Museum
of Science and Industry’s simulated coal mine in hope of creating something similar, but nothing came of
the efforts. In addition to the original problem of elevator capacity, which remained around eight to ten
people, new hurdles had stacked up over the years. The creation of Underground Vaults & Storage in
1959 now meant that security concerns for the sensitive materials transported and kept underground
factored in as well. In 1983, the salt company completed a four-year modernization project underground,
including replacement of the old railways that had transported salt (and visitors) with a new conveyor
belt system. Perhaps most important was the establishment of the Mine Safety and Health
Administration (MSHA) in 1977. While a step in the right direction for miners’ safety, MSHA did not ease
22 “’Tourist’ Shaft Proposed for Mine,” The Hutchinson News, April 11, 1958, in the Carey Salt Company Clippings –
April 1954 to January 1, 1958 Binder, RCHS. The article also mentioned the addition of souvenirs and refreshments
below ground. Construction of an escape shaft occurred in 1976. With a shaft forty-two inches in diameter,
however, the manlift could only carry two people, one above the other, at a time in its 18-foot cage. See George A.
Helton, “The Escape Shaft,” in Legacy: The Journal of the Reno County Historical Society, 18, no. 1 (Winter 2006):
15.
23 John Fischer, “Carey Salt mine may become tourist attraction” and “Mine tours restore Hutchinson tradition,”
The Hutchinson News, June 13, 1981, accessed via newspaperarchive.com on June 9, 2022. The idea had last been
considered, according to the writer, in 1979.
24 “More snags in plan for mine tour,” The Hutchinson News, June 15, 1981, accessed via newspaperarchive.com on
June 9, 2022.

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the call for tourist access. By the 1990s, the notion seemed near impossible. Nevertheless, those who
had toured the mine in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s as kids continued whispering in hushed tones, “Wouldn’t
it be great if we could get a tour of the salt mine again?”25 It took a new executive director of the Reno
County Museum, a young and curious Jay Smith, to ask the simple question: “Why not?”
An Unlikely Trio
Those in charge at Hutchinson Salt Company and UVS were quick to point out the countless
aforesaid reasons, but Smith was persistent. When he began as executive director in 1995, the Reno
County Historical Society was comprised of three full-time and two part-time employees. A unanimous
vote by the RCHS Board of Directors in November 1997 to establish a long-range planning committee
signaled a wish to expand. “The one thing I had was time because we didn’t have any money,” Smith
recalled, “so I just invested time,” asking questions of everyone from chamber leaders to business
officials to old miners about why the tours had ended and what it would take to revive them.26
In June 1999, Smith sat down with Max Liby, Mine Manager for the Hutchinson Salt Company,
and Lee Spence, President of Underground Vaults & Storage, to assess the possibilities and lay out their
concerns. Three challenges—expense, safety, and security—encapsulated the problem. The cost of
digging a new shaft and installing a new elevator were prohibitive for the RCHS. The salt company was
concerned with safety, as MSHA regulations precluded visitors from being near active mining operations.
UVS “sells security,” so the “idea of having 150,000 visitors wandering through the mine was
25 Jay Smith, “Daring Mighty Things: The Underground Museum Project,” in Legacy: The Journal of the Reno County
Historical Society, vol. 12, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 24; “June 30, 1983” in Carey Communiqué, 3 (June/July 1983), 1, in
the RCHS Photos… Copies Book 2 Binder, RCHS.
26 Jay Smith, phone interview with author, June 15, 2022; Smith, “Daring Mighty Things,” 24.

185
inappropriate at best.” Therefore, the trio of leaders realized that if “visitor access is controlled and kept
away from both UVS and mining activities,” the two companies could support the project.27
The trio quickly realized that not only was a new shaft key, but its construction could benefit all
parties involved. It would provide the salt company with a third shaft (including an existing two-person
escapeway), making operations even safer. For UVS, a new shaft would be a game-changer. Since its
inception in 1959, the company had shared the original hoist with the salt company. You could only fit
one palette of material on the cage when people rode up or down, and could not use the cage when salt
was being hoisted. This meant UVS only had access to the hoist four times during daytime hours. A
nightshift had more consistent access, but the benefits of a newer, larger shaft severed from salt
operations were obvious.28 UVS, in other words, needed a new shaft just as much as tourists did.
Construction of a two-story elevator within a new shaft, allowing for the secure transport of UVS
materials and the movement of the public up and down, became of tantamount importance for both
RCHS and UVS. An alliance between the two entities would moreover defray costs, giving the small
historical society a tangible way to fund a project it otherwise could not afford.
MSHA approval, however, was needed for the salt company and UVS to fully commit to the idea.
Smith and Spence spent the final months of 1999 requesting liability insurance quotes and working with
MSHA to cover safety regulations and secure the agency’s approval, which they eventually received.
Smith noted that they could not put tourists anywhere near the blasting zones. Even when the salt
company did blast, visitors had to be warned of what was happening, because you could hear the
blasting even if it was six miles away. Despite some client concern, the UVS Board voted unanimously to
support the project on October 27, 1999. The mine owner, Larry Bingham, signed off in December 1999.
27 Jay Smith, “2003 City of Hutchinson Growth Account Request for the Reno County Historical Society: Kansas
Underground Salt Museum Project,” March 19, 2001, 5, RCHS.
28 Lee Spence, phone interview with author, June 16, 2022.

186
With this final hurdle cleared, those at the RCHS realized the salt mine project “is now a reality.”29 Smith
recalled that in many ways, the trio was “working at odds with each other every step of the way” given
the project’s safety and security concerns.
Open communication and many roundtable discussions paved the way for the three institutions
to find a way to not just construct the new mineshaft and elevator, but also provide long-term economic
benefits for each of the partners. Spence viewed it as “three companies working together to do what
they do best, and it’s all three different industries” working “out of the same location. You don’t see that
much anywhere.” Smith framed it as “one of the most unique business partnerships that you’ll ever run
into.”30 The Hutchinson Salt Company, who owns the mine, leases the space to UVS, who in turn
subleases a portion to the Museum. UVS and RCHS shared the expense in constructing surface
improvements from land donated by the salt company, as well as digging the new mineshaft and
installing the elevator.31
On May 2, 2000, Jay Smith led a press conference on the Hutchinson Salt Company grounds
announcing the project to the public. In a board report the following year, Smith reiterated to his
members “that it took us 43 years to reach this point [where] we have the necessary project partners in
place, and we have the support of the community.”32 He was, of course, referencing the newspaper
article in 1958 proposing a ‘tourist’ shaft for the mine. The project benefited from a flurry activity by
those leading the three companies in the late 1990s, but demand for mine tourism had never really
disappeared in the first place. A vision statement for the museum reiterated that visitors would not be
29 Reno County Museum, “Director’s Report,” November 7, 1999; RCHS Board Meeting Minutes, November 17,
1999, in the 1999 Board File, RCHS; RCHS Board Meeting Minutes, December 15, 1999, in the 2000 Board File,
RCHS; Jay Smith, phone interview, June 15, 2022.
30 Jay Smith, phone interview, June 15, 2022; Lee Spence, phone interview, June 16, 2022.
31 Underground Bound: The Case for Support, RCHS.
32 “Minutes for the Salt Museum Advisory Council Meeting,” August 17, 2000, in the 2000 RCHS Financials File,
RCHS ; Smith, “Daring Mighty Things,” 24; Jay Smith, “RCHS Board Report,” October 11, 2001, in the 2001 RCHS
Board File, RCHS.

187
allowed in the mine’s production areas, “but they will still experience the look, sound and feels of a
working salt mine.” The story of salt’s importance—its human history and its geologic history—would
unfold “in the magic, unknown, mysterious, subterranean environs of a giant cavern 600 feet below
ground that stretches out for miles” to no seeming end.33 The team turned their attention to the task on
which all other elements of the project relied: transporting guests into this magical space.
The Shaft Redux, 2004-2005
Access below ground hinged on construction of the new shaft and elevator. Those redeveloping
the underground could still visit the site by way of the original production hoist, but this work could only
hit full steam with the new access point established. The new shaft would fit a “double-deck” elevator
with a capacity of fifteen people on each level. It also needed to accommodate power and
communication cables, water and sewer lines, and fresh air to circulate underground. Keeping the shaft
free from water, then, was of the utmost importance. An estimate in February 2003 put the cost of
drilling and installing the elevator at around $4,000,000. UVS agreed to front a significant portion of this
cost. In December 2003, the group selected Thyssen Mining of Regina, Saskatchewan to drill the shaft.
Thyssen planned to employ a “freeze drying” process and conventional blasting methods to complete
the project. Jay Smith noted that “we were all convinced that Thyssen had the most respect for the
aquifer, and realization of our need to have a completely dry shaft.”34 Rather than employ a professional
deep-sea diving team to excavate through the 120-foot-thick aquifer as the Carey Salt Company had
done in 1922, Thyssen subcontracted Moretrench American Corporation to freeze it. “It’s definitely not a
33 “Vision Statement for the Reno County Museum,” undated, in the 1999 RCHS Board File, RCHS; Smith, “Daring
Mighty Things,” 27.
34 William R. Wood, II to John E. Caton, February 2, 2000, in the 2000 RCHS Board File, RCHS; Jay Smith, “RCHS
Board Report,” January 18, 2003, in the 2004 RCHS Board File, RCHS; Jay Smith, “RCHS Board Report,” December
13, 2003, in the 2003 RCHS Board File, RCHS.

188
common procedure,” said Volker Ebert, president of operations for Thyssen, but added that it was the
most effective way to mine through the water-bearing strata.
The construction crew expressed surprise at the presence of media on the first day of work. “The
community is definitely excited to see the project begin, and now I think we’re excited too,” remarked
Ebert. On April 12, 2004, RCHS and UVS hosted a groundbreaking ceremony in which Thyssen
demonstrated the “mucking” procedure within the shaft for the audience. People gathered round the
growing hole to watch Thyssen raise the first load of muck with its Cryderman Clam. Surrounding the
shaft’s concrete ring was the freezing system Thyssen had installed to break through the aquifer. A
supply line furnished brine chilled to -26 degrees Fahrenheit to freeze pipes sunken into the ground. The
process took forty days to complete before the aquifer was sufficiently frozen to proceed with
excavation.35 If the ceremony signaled a momentous occasion for all the involved, it also marked the
beginning of a slog.
To create the shaft, workers hand-drilled two-foot centers which they filled with explosives to
blast away rock and ice. The Cryderman Clam then filled a four-ton bucket with blasted material, which
35 Dave Stephens, “Mine company exec eager about museum shaft dig,” The Hutchinson News, RCHS; Jay Smith,
“Memorandum: Re RCHS Board Reports 2/19/04 and 3/18/04,” March 11, 2004, in the 2004 RCHS Board File,
RCHS.
Figures 53 and 54 – Views of the Groundbreaking ceremony for the Kansas Underground Salt Museum’s new shaft. On the left,
the Cryderman Clam excavates the first load of muck from the shaft. On the right, a complex array of pipes furnishes chilled
brine to freeze pipes sunken underground intended to freeze the aquifer. Photos courtesy of Reno County Historical Society.

189
was hoisted to the surface and stored for removal. By summer 2004, Thyssen had erected a portable
headframe, holding hoisting pulleys, above the shaft. The addition of the headframe expedited work, but
it was still a tedious process. “Our day-to-day operation is basically pretty slow,” Ebert noted. “Eight to
ten feet per day is a lot for this kind of work.” By August 2004, Thyssen had excavated down to 265 feet,
enough to turn off the freeze plant because the crew had completely passed through the liquid strata.36
Work continued slowly but surely in the following months. It was not until September of 2005 that the
elevator cables arrived, delayed in their shipment from South Africa due to Hurricane Katrina and supply
chain interruptions. By December 2005, the elevator and hoist room were finished. Even with their years
of mining experience, the work digging the shaft in Hutchinson provided Ebert and his Thyssen crew with
a new experience. “Usually we’re mining a shaft so people can get something out of the ground,” Ebert
said. “I never really thought about making the shaft to put something back into it.”37
Ebert’s remark may come off as glib, but it stresses the exceptional nature of this new shaft. The
Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine underwent extensive redevelopment to transform a defunct turn-of-thecentury space into a modern, safe, and accessible tourist attraction. Excavating 650 feet of earth and ice
from the ground to reach the salt mine, however, signaled more than just redevelopment. An entirely
new industrial project took place in 2004-2005 for non-industrial purposes. The shaft connecting the salt
museum’s aboveground visitor center with the mine below complicates the notion that this brand of
tourism can ever truly be considered “postindustrial.” Even in sites where industry has departed, the
remaining infrastructure often requires maintenance and upkeep similar in function to that needed
during active production. Without salt extraction, the leftover caverns still present risks to incoming
36 Stephens, “Mine company exec eager”; Jay Smith, “Memorandum: Re RCHS Board Reports 5/21/04 and 6/8/04,”
June 8, 2004; Jay Smith, “Memorandum: Re Director’s Report, 8/12/04 and 9/30/04,” in the 2004 RCHS Board File,
RCHS.
37 Jane McCone, “Each visit is still a thrill!” in Legacy: The Journal of the Reno County Historical Society, 17, 4 (Fall
2005): 21; Kevin Murphy, “Museum truly is worth its salt,” The Kansas City Star, February 11, 2006, in the 2006
RCHS Board File, RCHS; Stephens, “Mine company exec eager.”

190
visitors. Tourist sites must employ workers familiar with the hazards and risks of industrial production to
maintain stringent safety standards for non-workers. In Hutchinson, active mining operations continued
below ground, and RCHS and UVS employed large-scale industrial methods to create their new access
port. Had salt mining theoretically shut down, the two entities might have simply reused and retrofitted
the existing skip hoist. The fact that production continued meant RCHS and UVS were required to employ
herculean efforts to sink a new, 650-foot shaft removed from the production site. This process was every
bit as “industrial” in its operation as that of the original shaft sunk in 1922-1923. Although the
underground experience fits within a postindustrial genre of tourism, its creation, operation, and
maintenance represent anything but. With these institutions now free to come and go without
disrupting salt extraction, RCHS’s attention turned to redevelopment of their mine space underground.
The museum space occupied the equivalent of more than three football fields of space below
ground. The section visitors descend into was mined in the 1930s, with portions of the attraction
extending into areas excavated in the 1940s and 1950s. UVS added security doors, surveillance cameras,
and special cinderblock walls around the shaft so that when museum visitors come underground, they
Figures 55 and 56 – On the left, view of the new mine shaft in its early stages of excavation. In the distance can be seen Hutchinson Salt
Company, where guests originally entered the salt mine from the 1920s through the 1960s. On the right, view of the portable
headframe, erected by Thyssen to hold the hoisting pulleys during shaft excavation. Photos courtesy of Reno County Historical Society.

191
are directed one way, while UVS staff goes another way.38 Subterranean redevelopment unfolded in two
distinct stages. The first stage addressed rendering the mine space safe and accessible, while the second
added comfort and amenities needed for a tourist site. Much work was needed to smooth and level out
the mine surfaces on the ground, the ceiling, and on the support pillars. In several areas, floor heaves
had emerged where the floor had buckled under the pressure of the weight exerted by the pillars. These
heaves reduced the space’s height by several feet and created an uneven ground surface. Drilling and
blasting for salt had often left slabbing and scaling on the roof and pillars, which required cutting away
about a foot of salt in numerous areas.
The best way to manage this rehabilitation work was by trimming the surfaces with a continuous
miner. Use of this machine would leave behind a smooth, level surface in areas that were previously
uneven and fractured. A two-man crew with a loader and operator could clean surfaces quickly with this
type of machine, saving the project time and labor in the long run. Jay first presented the idea of
purchasing a continuous miner to the RCHS board in October 2002, noting that he, Lee Spence, and Max
Liby had located a used machine costing $225,000. A year later, the machine was being reconstructed
underground even before groundbreaking had occurred on the shaft above. Early rehabilitation efforts
also included ventilation. This required the building of solid ventilation walls, or bulkheads, around the
entire museum facility, with a series of vents and fans used to create the air flow.39 Much of this first
stage of work occurred before and during construction of the shaft. This meant that once Thyssen had
broken through, work on the second stage of development could proceed in earnest.
38 Myron Marcotte, interview with author, at the site, February 9, 2022; Lee Spence, phone interview, June 16,
2022
39 “Report by Rock Mechanic Assist to Jay Smith,” August 13, 2002; Jay Smith, “RCHS Board Meeting Minutes,”
October 16, 2002, in the 2002 RCHS Financials File, RCHS; Jay Smith, “RCHS Board Report,” October 10, 2003, in the
2003 RCHS Board File, RCHS.

192
In many ways, UVS pioneered the creation of the salt museum through their own processes of
rendering the space hospitable in the 1950s and 1960s. UVS had brought in an underground conduit for
lighting. The company had restrooms and an oven underground to cook meals because it was timeprohibitive to send employees up for lunch in the afternoon. UVS already had in place water and sewer
lines, as well electrical power, generators, and fire protection systems. Workers ran these cables down
the new shaft. The company had previous experience smoothing walls with the continuous miner, and
was also adept with the laying of saltcrete, created by the addition of salt (instead of sand) in the mixing
of cement. Without cement trucks underground, workers had to pour and install the saltcrete by hand
for much of the museum’s 100,000 square feet of space. UVS installed lights into the salt ceiling by using
blasting ramset pins to hold the fixtures in place. The fact that there was nothing to attach these and
similar fixtures to except salt presented a recurring challenge. With metal rusting underground, upkeep
and maintenance needed to be constant. The space’s physical parameters and the pre-determined
methods for much of the redevelopment eliminated a good deal of guesswork. The smooth, saltcrete
floor and lighting throughout gave the salt mine a more attractive ambience than those created by the
mine tour in Beckley. Smith recalled that they wanted the experience to “feel welcoming.” Given the
lengthy descent, “we didn’t want [visitors] to freak out with it being dirty and dusty.”40 This approach
differed from most other mine tours but was made possible by the more capacious contours of the salt
mine. The room and pillar mining system enabled the use of smooth flooring and illumination of
cavernous rooms.
Once the flooring and electric wiring was in place, crews installed the exhibits and machines,
many of which had been left in the mine but needed cleaning and relocation. Crews reassembled an ore
cart train in 2005 and the “Big Move” of most display machinery took place on January 22, 2007. There
40 Lee Spence, phone interview, June 16, 2022; Jay Smith, phone interview, June 15, 2022.

193
are no dangerous gases in a salt mine, and although the museum space remained miles away from active
production and separated by bulkheads and brattice curtains, safety remained of the utmost importance
for developers. In addition to visitors receiving instructions and hardhats for their trip underground,
employees, guides, and volunteers were required to complete extensive safety training per MSHA
guidelines.41 As crews rounded out the site’s redevelopment, funding had become a major concern for
the RCHS. The small historical society had managed to raise several million dollars, but still fell short of
their $7.8 million campaign goal. UVS again agreed to defray costs for the aboveground visitor center.
The RCHS completed the necessary funding for the project with its successful application to use Kansas’s
STAR bond program begun in 1993. Sales Tax Revenue bonds allow local governments to use future sales
tax revenue for development or redevelopment projects with the intent that these attractions will boost
the local economy over time. The RCHS received $4.8 million through the program, enabling it to
complete most of the remaining infrastructure needed for the project.42
The Kansas Underground Salt Museum opened to the public on May 7, 2007. Much remained
unfinished, but leadership felt that, after years of delays, it was finally time. The restrooms proved to be
one of the biggest challenges to install. While crews completed the bathrooms underground, the
museum offered porta-potties that were sent topside every few days for cleaning. Even if less polished
than RCHS and UVS would have liked, the salt museum proved popular in its first summer. About 50,000
people visited the site in its first year. In the first two years of operation, the museum averaged 265 daily
41 Jane McCone, “Executive Director’s Report,” July 21, 2005, in the 2005 RCHS Board File, RCHS; Linda Schmitt,
“Director’s Report,” January 17, 2007; Linda Schmitt, “Director’s Report, November 28, 2007, in the 2007 RCHS
Board File, RCHS.
42 Smith, “2003 City of Hutchinson Growth Account”; “Preliminary Construction Budget: KUSM Above-Ground
Facility,” January 25, 2005; “RCHS Board Meeting Minutes,” March 17, 2005, in the 2005 RCHS Board File, RCHS;
Murphy, “Museum truly is worth its salt”; Tim Carpenter, ”Legislative audit places Kansas’ lonely reliance on STAR
bonds under harsh spotlight,” Kansas Reflector, August 31, 2021, accessed September 21, 2022, Legislative audit
places Kansas' lonely reliance on STAR bonds under harsh spotlight - Kansas Reflector. Only three of the sixteen
attractions reviewed during the audit met the state Department of Commerce’s tourism-related goals. The salt
mine was one of the three that met its goals and remained compliant per the original intent and numbers.

194
visitors. From May 2007 through March 2011, the museum brought in 229,959 visitors, excluding event
attendees.43
The Descent
The subterranean experience immerses guests in the vastness of the space primarily through a
series of rides, each of which highlights the mine’s immensity in different ways. Guests are thus
immersed within Hutchinson’s particular manifestation of “boom” through the experience’s multiple
presentations of its scale. Entering the skip hoist signals the first of guests’ engagement with this scale,
which is juxtaposed by unassuming aboveground visitor center in which they begin their journey. As the
first of three “rides,” the 90 second descent plays up its industrial character by keeping the lights off to
simulate a miners’ experience and letting guests absorb the hoist’s clanking and rattling. According to a
2017 study conducted by Catherine Ronck and William Price analyzing user-generated content on
TripAdvisor, the descent was “by far the most-referenced aspect of the visitor experience.” Many visitors
noted that this 650-foot journey was the farthest down they had been; this held appeal and excitement
43 Linda Schmitt, email correspondence with author, August 5, 2022; Michael Ables, interview with author, at the
site, February 9, 2022; “Daily Attendance, KUSM—May through September,” undated, in the 2007 Board File,
RCHS; Gayle Ferrell, “Wow! We’ve come a long way,” in Legacy: The Journal of the Reno County Historical Society
23, no. 2 (Spring 2011): 12-13.
Figure 57 – View of Strataca / Kansas Underground Salt Museum, c. 2022. On the left is the frame for the hoist and
on the right is the museum entrance. To the immediate right of the entrance sits Switch Engine Number 2, built by
General Electric in 1919 and purchased by the Carey Salt Company in 1928. Photo courtesy of author.

195
for some, but served as a phobia for others. This opportunity to descend to such depths, Ronck and Price
noted, “was a driving factor in their choice to visit the museum and was among the most memorable
experiences.”44 Upon exiting the hoist, visitors enter a spacious, well-lit room whose openness and
illumination juxtapose with the dark and rugged feel of the journey downward. The giant hall, in which
visitors get their first view of the shimmery salt walls, presents a feeling of comfort and cleanness for
guests. Ronck and Price affirmed that, “almost without exception,” the “wide rooms and tall ceilings
quickly alleviated concerns.”45
Originally, guests began their underground journey with a guided “dark ride” on a tram to an
undeveloped area and a subsequent walking tour showcasing geological features and old mining
equipment. These guides, many of whom were former miners, met the guests topside and accompanied
them for the entire trip, providing information on mining and the salt. This approach mirrored the more
traditional one taken at Beckley, in which guides relied on their years of expertise to provide an engaging
and informative experience. In 2010, Linda Schmitt, executive director of the salt museum from
44 Ronck and Price, “Revealing ‘Salt City’s’ Geological and Mining Heritage at Strataca,” 143.
45 Ibid.
Figure 58 – View of the narrows before entering the 1940s-era mine holding the majority of the museum space. Note
the smooth and level saltcrete flooring, as well as the numerous pipes and cables attached to the ceiling. These
fixtures run behind the image to the hoist, where they run aboveground through the shaft. Photo courtesy of author.

196
November 2006 to December 2015, decided to more closely align the museum experience with current
museum best practice which favored sensory experience over information. Maile Fincher, Curator of
Exhibits for the museum, noted that visitors are “no longer content to simply gaze at artifacts in glass
cases. They want and expect an experience.” Schmitt’s decision to reorient the visitor experience
underground removed the primacy of the former miners, refocusing attention on the salt itself. Many of
the original guides quit because of this change. Guides still played a part, but the experience became
more dispersed with distinct exhibits and experiences.46
In place of the more traditional guided tours, guests now enter the Great Room and are invited
to explore a geological exhibit on the Permian Sea in the first wide, long corridor originally mined out in
the 1930s. The ability for guests to progress at their own pace through this first exhibit enables them to
feel the vastness of the space in silence and physically interact with the salt. One giant slab of salt
encourages guests to “Please touch,” and the Permian Playground invites those to sift their fingers
through hardened mud, oversize rock salt, and salt dust to feel their consistencies. Visitors then walk
through “the narrows,” which connects the 1930s-era mine with the larger room-and-pillar section of
the 1940s in which the bulk of the museum rests. One of the main exhibits in the 1940s space is the
Mining Gallery, where visitors can learn about the working conditions in the salt mine and the various
machines and equipment used throughout the mine. Numerous vehicles sit on display in the gallery, as
well as exhibits with audiovisual explanations of mining practices, such as drilling and blasting. Another
self-guided portion of the experience, the Mining Gallery most closely resembles the focus on
production and labor history emphasized by the tours in Beckley. The exhibit remains expansive and
thorough, but comprises only one numerous displays within the vast museum space.
46 Linda Schmitt, email correspondence, August 5, 2022; Maile Fincher, “Technological Challenges Face KUSM
Exhibit Designers,” in Legacy: The Journal of the Reno County Historical Society 18, no. 1 (Winter 2006): 12-13.

197
The Mining Gallery focuses on the workers and the conditions they faced underground, but
skirts around the subject of class. Ronck and Price point out that there is “little insight given to the mine
owners nor labor history.”47 Neither does the self-guided Mining Gallery shed light on the role women
played in the salt mining industry—other than as tourists—or the large Latinx immigrant population in
Reno County.48 Perhaps the voices of former miners as guides originally grounded this exhibit space in its
labor history, but with their absence, the surrounding machinery and tools used to extract and transport
rock salt reinforce an almost exclusively technological focus. The narrative conveyed in its stead through
various interpretive media focuses on the grit and hardship of the miners, who persevered through
rough conditions to extract a valuable resource for the American economy. A cardboard cutout of Mike
Rowe, with a brief description of his visit in 2006 which formed the basis of the “Salt Miner” episode of
the Discovery Channel’s show Dirty Jobs, reinforces this theme. The show’s episode provided a huge
boon in visitation in the ensuing months after airing.49 This narrative of perseverance and hard work
rings true, but the Mining Gallery lacks interpretive heft when compared to the sobering and self47 Ronck and Price, “Revealing ‘Salt City’s’ Geological and Mining Heritage at Strataca,” 148. Ronck and Price also
point out the lack of coverage on the industry’s negative environmental and health consequences, perhaps in
deference to the role the Hutchinson Salt Company continues to play in the museum’s operation. The authors note
that mining has contributed to salt intrusion into underground reservoirs and the creation of damaging sinkholes
aboveground (146).
48 Ibid., 149.
49 Ibid., 147.
Figures 59 and 60 – View from the Mining Gallery. On the left, an undercutter. Salt extraction shared many similarities with coal
mining despite the stark differences in working conditions. The undercutter blade cuts a gash eight to nine feet deep into the wall,
and six inches high, rendering the blast more efficient while maintaining a level floor. On the right, one of the three 25-capacity
“man cars” the Carey Salt Company commissioned specifically for tours in 1961. Photos courtesy of author.

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reflective stories told in Beckley. Where the underground experience shines, nevertheless, is in its
embrace of the cavernous, seemingly endless environment ready to be explored.
The original concept for the Dark Ride involved transporting visitors approximately one eighth of
a mile from the elevator to the main museum site. The reoriented Dark Ride operates as a separate but
dedicated attraction. The trip features a thirty-minute tram ride on paved saltcrete led by a guide
through many of the mine’s unlit passageways. The tram is comfortable and the terrain level and
smooth, but the consuming darkness creates a feeling of immersion as visitors squint left and right
peering through the seemingly endless corridors of salt. Motion sensor lighting enables guides to stop at
points of interest while maintaining an overall sense of obscurity. Although the ride through the dark is
thrilling, the experience also holds much of the museum’s educational thrust.
The journey begins alongside an array of old transportation machines, including a trolley car
engine nicknamed the “galloping goose,” Carey Salt Company salt carts, and a wooden powder car.
Although the turn-of-the-century theming that dominates other postindustrial case studies is far more
muted in Hutchinson’s attraction, these extant machines reinforce the historic nature of the site and the
focus on its “boom” years of the early twentieth century. Narrated by a guide, the tour delves into
mining operations and the many hazards workers faced underground. One stop illuminates a floor heave
where pressure from the 650 feet of earth above the mine caused the floor to gradually lurch upwards.
Other stops show a “gob” wall made of salt-filled dynamite boxes to help direct air flow and some of the
equipment the AEC used during its nuclear waste storage testing in the 1960s. The final stop allows
passengers to disembark the tram and pick out a souvenir piece of rock salt from a large pile, providing
tiny burlap sacks if needed. Jay Smith noted that this pile was originally the detritus from the continuous
miner, but the rocks have likely been replaced over time.

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In late 2007, the museum developed an additional attraction, the “Dark Walk,” mainly for
students partaking in the newly launched Salt Academy while keeping the Dark Ride trams free for
regular visitors. The Hutchinson Salt Company brought in thirty-six tons of salt to grade the path for the
new walk.50 While this latter attraction did not last, much of its route and stopping points were
incorporated into the museum’s third and final ride on a historic train. The museum added the Salt Mine
Express in March 2011 after tearing up almost 5,000 feet of abandoned rails and ties to create the track.
Laying the route, converting, building, and painting the train, and creating the audio voiceover took
about a year to complete. The fifteen-minute train ride journeys through an area adjacent to the
museum that had been untouched since the 1950s. The route emphasizes the raw, untouched nature of
what visitors view as they pass by, including a collapsed, wooden bulkhead, an extensive roof fall where
salt broke away from the compacted mud layer above it, and a trash pile from a 1950s’ break area with
many name-brand products still visible.51
The addition of the Salt Mine Express in 2011 signaled a desire to not just create new
experiences to encourage repeat visitation, but to do so within the contours of the site’s increasingly
adventure-oriented aims. The ruins uncovered while journeying on the train facilitate a sense of
50 ESA Design sketches, RCHS; Jay Smith, phone interview, June 15, 2022; Linda Schmitt, “Director’s Report,”
October 17, 2007; Linda Schmitt, “Director’s Report,” November 28, 2007, in the 2007 RCHS Board File, RCHS.
51 Ferrell, “Wow! We’ve come a long way”; Linda Schmitt, email correspondence, August 5, 2022.
Figures 61 and 62 – Views from the Dark Ride and the Salt Mine Express. On the left, the salt rock pile from which guests are
invited to select a sample no larger than the palm of their hand to take home as a souvenir. A table with small burlap sacks
for storage can be seen in the foreground. On the right, the Salt Mine Express journeys past a Carey Salt Mine cart and old
railbed that would have been used to transport salt from 1923 to 1983. Photos courtesy of author.

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exploration and discovery. While the already established Dark Ride quietly whisks visitors around the
paved saltcrete, the Salt Mine Express provides a louder and bumpier way to journey through the
abandoned space. This rougher, less refined ride along the rail lines pairs well with the undeveloped
portions of the mine through which it travels. The use of abandoned rails and ties to create the track
signaled adaptive reuse of infrastructure that had laid dormant on-site since the mining company
converted to a conveyor-belt system in 1983. At the same time, addition of a third ride to pair with that
of the elevator descent and the Dark Ride enhanced the site’s entertainment appeal. Far from just
another ride, the Salt Mine Express functions as a ruins tour, adding to the site’s appeals to immersion
and adventure while maintaining its historic integrity. Taken collectively, the three rides almost suggest
to guests that they are descending into a subterranean theme park, with the space chock full of
immersive and mobile experiences to stimulate the senses.
Part of this themed atmosphere stems from the number of modern amenities that provide a
strange juxtaposition with the vast, abandoned spaces through which the rides travel. Modern
bathrooms seem out of place 650-feet underground, and an extensive gift shop sells all things saltrelated, as well as snacks and drinks for purchase. Comfort coexists with the space’s rougher edges,
highlighting to visitors the space’s extreme versatility. Nowhere is this weirdness more beautifully
captured than in the Underground Vaults and Storage exhibit near the gift shop. Here, visitors can see a
range of Hollywood props and costumes, including those worn by George Clooney and Arnold
Schwarzenegger in Batman & Robin (1997). In 2007, the Warner Brothers Lot (Archive) Museum lent UVS
many of the costumes and props for display. Gazing at costumes of Superman, Mr. Freeze, and Ricky
Bobby amidst dozens of old-time reel cases, visitors suddenly feel transported to a studio lot tour in
Burbank, California, forgetting they are 650 feet beneath the Great Plains of Kansas.
The exhibit also provides visitors with a comprehensive overview of UVS and their mission. Lee
Spence noted that the exhibit enables guests to learn about the company’s diverse range of holdings,

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including acres of film negatives from major Hollywood studios, without providing tourist access to the
secure storage facilities.52 As with construction of the hoist, the partnership between RCHS and UVS
proved fruitful yet again. The Warner Brothers costumes and props served as a boon to the Kansas
Underground Salt Museum, while the museum’s presence afforded UVS a public relations platform it
otherwise would not have had. A 2022 site brochure advertises the Dark Ride and the Salt Mine Express
as must-see attractions, but makes no mention of this exhibit, likely because UVS manages it separately.
Nor does the website reference it, instead drawing attention to the hoist, the Permian Room, and the
Mining Gallery in addition to the aforesaid rides.53 As a result, many visitors likely encounter the UVS
exhibit as an unexpected, if oddly satisfying bonus. The subject of Hollywood has an obvious hold on the
average visitor, as well as transportive qualities completely in tune with the immersive and
entertainment-oriented initiatives those running the tourist site uphold. We can therefore assume the
exhibit’s lack of incorporation into the site’s promotion was an intentional and necessary omission due to
management or contractual relations between the disparate entities in operation belowground.
52 Lee Spence, phone interview, June 16, 2022; Linda Schmitt, “Director’s Report,” July 18, 2007, in the 2007 RCHS
Board File, RCHS; Adrian Zink, “Hollywood in a Salt Mine,” in Hidden History of Kansas (Charleston: Arcadia
Publishing, 2017), 70-72.
53 Strataca: Kansas Underground Salt Museum, “Attractions,” accessed December 22, 2022, Attractions -
STRATACA: KS Underground Salt Museum (underkansas.org).
Figure 63 – View of one of the Underground Vaults and Storage exhibit rooms, with costumes and
props lent from Warner Brothers. Photo courtesy of author.

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Image Maintenance
To reflect the museum’s shift towards more immersive and adventure-driven experiences, the
Kansas Underground Salt Museum changed its name to Strataca on June 4, 2013. Linda Schmitt recalls
that they were involved in a series of focus groups within Kansas to gauge what people knew about the
state’s attractions. Findings revealed that the museum had an image problem despite positive reviews by
those who had visited. The museum’s marketing firm came up with five different names and logos. The
staff and board voted Strataca as the winner. To the chagrin of some and delight of others, the new
name left ambiguous what exactly visitors were to expect once underground. It was clear, however, the
direction those in charge sought to take the attraction. “Strataca,” Schmitt noted, was designed to
provide “the ultimate underground adventure.” The switch to “Strataca” in 2013 “changed our way of
thinking and now drives all of our decisions about future development.” Words like “experiential,
authentic, exciting, unexpected, adventurous and participatory” all loomed large in their plans to make
Strataca “not just the best museum about salt but the ultimate underground adventure anywhere.” The
new name, in other words, represented a shift in the organization’s identity from a museum “to more of
an adventure and an experience.”54
In the 1990s, Jay Smith had recollected that, as a young executive director at the RCHS, he heard
many locals talk about how memorable their trips into the salt mine as kids were in the 1930s, 40s, and
50s.55 These conversations drove Smith’s efforts to reopen tourist access. By the 2010s, however, those
in charge were looking ahead to the attraction’s appeal to future generations. The site opened as a
museum in large part to appeal to those who had nostalgia for their Carey Salt tours growing up. New
54 Linda Schmitt, email correspondence, August 5, 2022; Beccy Tanner, “Just Another Day at the Salt Mine?
Hardly,” The Washington Post June 3, 2000, accessed on September 21, 2022, Just Another Day at the Salt Mine?
Hardly - The Washington Post; Olivia Bergmeier, “Want to run a 5K underground, in a salt mine? Or in a race to
qualify for the Boston Marathon? The Hutchinson News, March 5, 2022, accessed on September 21, 2022, Where
you can run 5K races, half and full marathon's in Central Kansas (hutchnews.com).
55 Jay Smith, phone interview, June 15, 2022.

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managers nevertheless decided to appeal to younger demographics that craved more adventure. Schmitt
spearheaded this initiative with the debut of the Salt Safari in November 2013. The Salt Safari enables
those in good physical condition to follow guides on a three-hour adventure into an undeveloped,
uneven portion of the mine. “You’ll be guided only by the light on your miner’s helmet and a thin yellow
rope line on the floor that stretches throughout the otherwise darkened and seemingly forgotten mine,”
one reviewer noted.56 Unlike Beckley, which remained hampered by the physical limitations and safety
concerns, the salt mine’s expansive underground afforded its developers room to adapt to changing
visitor interests and demographics.
The Salt Safari mine hike tapped into a growing interest in adventure tourism in the twenty-first
century, but it was far from the only offering beyond the general admission. Overnight scouting, “Murder
in the Mine” mystery dinners, Salt Academy classes, wedding receptions, and a variety of 5K and 10K
marathons including a zombie run in 2022 all exemplified the salt mine’s expansive and adaptable
environment.57 New programming has continued to reinforce Strataca’s shift to adventure tourism that
stresses the appeal of underground exploration and discovery. These metrics, however, had always been
inherent to the subterranean adventure, from descending the skip hoist in the 1930s to establishment of
a permanent museum underground in 2007, visitors across all eras sought to immerse themselves in
what they viewed as a unique and mysterious underground city.
A Comparative Look
Strataca’s decision to highlight adventure and exploration in its marketing and development, and
away from a more exclusive focus on mining history, unfolded for two reasons. The timing of its
establishment as a tourist site coincided with museum studies advocating the appeal of adventure
56 Dan Deming, “This is an adventure worth its salt,” The Hutchinson News, November 13, 2013, accessed via
newspaperarchive.com on June 9, 2022.
57 Ferrell, “Wow! We’ve come a long way”; Linda Schmitt, email correspondence, August 5, 2022.

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tourism and sensory experience. The salt mine’s vast space, however, also enabled more flexibility than
the narrow and claustrophobic confines of the coal mine in Beckley. Both sites offer immersive
experiences for their guests, beginning with a ride underground. The thrill derived from these unique,
subterranean environments explain why mine tourism has thrived for much of the twentieth century.
The mine tours in Beckley and Hutchinson, moreover, have succeeded as tourist operations, attracting
upwards of 50,000 visitor a year. These sites each benefitted from existing regional tourist offerings. The
New River Gorge parkland and the Cosmosphere and Kansas State Fair in Hutchinson all helped to
establish a tourist base within arm’s reach of both sites. These mines tours, nevertheless, have left an
indelible impact on those who visit underground and have contributed culturally and financially to their
local communities.
The presence of miners as tour guides also played a major role in each site’s interpretive vision.
At Beckley, a new batch of miners from the surrounding region provide tours each season. These miners
continue to function as the pulse of the attraction, with their stories of backbreaking work, danger, and
camaraderie echoing through the drift mine. In Hutchinson, tour guides originally accompanied groups
for the duration of their visit. This approach has shifted over time, and while the guides still play a role,
they do so in more dispersed and piecemeal fashion. Visitors can certainly spend a few hours learning
about salt extraction, and listen to stories of the miners’ lives underground, but this is but one of several
interpretive options on which tourists may focus. The rides, mine’s geology (with its Permian Room), and
the site’s association with Hollywood (through the UVS exhibit) offer guests a wider range of
interpretation than just its mining legacy. As Strataca moves into the future, its focus on more adventure
and experiential offerings, as well as hosting non-industry related events such as marathons and murder
mystery dinners, suggests its interpretive range may increase even more in future years.
The mine tours have also informed our image of industry through a special relationship with
film, television, and popular culture. Many mining companies produced mid-century industrial films on

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their production methods, while Pathé ensured the Carey Salt Company’s new mine was viewed in
theaters as early as 1923. This didactic impulse has continued in the twenty-first century with shows
such as Dirty Jobs and How Stuff Works, both of which aired episodes featuring tour-designer Myron
Marcotte and the Hutchinson Salt Company. The mines have also served as filming locations for movies.
James Earl Jones, for example, spends time in the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine for the film Matewan
(1987) while TobyMac uses the site for his music video “Promised Land” (2021). This media frames the
Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine as an active site of production. The Warner Brothers costumes and props
featured in the UVS exhibit do not seem so out of place when taken in context of the myriad ways mine
tours have become new spaces of (cultural) production. Whether as filming locations, the subject of
stories themselves, or simply through their successful operations as tourist attractions, mine tours have
played an important role in shaping our image of industry as a relic of the past.
Industry in Hutchinson feels more enjoyable, more alluring. From the smooth saltcrete flooring
to the Mr. Freeze costume on display in the UVS exhibit, Hutchinson’s salt mine appears more inviting
than most others, with multiple rides offering safe exploration. What visitors view as the “present-day”
mine becomes less associated with continued extraction, and more associated with newer, more
entertaining uses. Each mine tour has also informed guests’ image of industry through their presentation
of a historicized industrial theme seen in the numerous machines and mining methods used long ago.
Visitors amble past historic machinery in the Mining Gallery as extraction continues just out of sight. This
theming can filter outwards into the cities themselves, freezing the built environments as “historic” relics
of the past. This codification has become a powerful tool with which communities reeling from
deindustrialization can market their industrial image to outside populations. The City of Bisbee, Arizona,
did just this after its mines shut down in 1975, but its construction of this image was not wholly by
choice. Many of the scars on Bisbee’s landscape—features with which those crafting an image had to
work—are irrevocable, the result of a century of manipulation by man, machine, and powder.

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Chapter 6: Quicksilver No More: Mine Tourism’s Role in “Postindustrial” Bisbee
The drive into Bisbee, Arizona has been said to feel like a time warp. “Until you slip through the
Mule Pass Tunnel,” one writer noted, “you’d never guess there were 6,500 people anywhere within 30
miles.”1 Bisbee sits roughly 100 miles south of Tucson, and just eight miles north of the Mexican border.
At an elevation of 5,500 feet, it rests in a bowl above the surrounding Sonoran Desert like an oasis in the
sky, offering cool air in summer and autumnal temperatures in winter. Subtle hints on the way suggest
the landscape is changing. Manzanillo trees begin to blanket the richly colored mountains as you creep
further and further south from Tombstone. The Mule Pass Tunnel, then, transports visitors to a town
with “something otherworldly” about it. “There’s something Shangri La-ish about Bisbee,” said Richard
Shelton. One writer described it as “faintly European and thoroughly Wild West.” For many, Bisbee
“exists somehow in a reality all its own…. There is talk of a special magic, a spirit that defies both logic
and convention.”2
The magical quality permeating throughout the town stems not just from the stark change in
terrain, but from the unique nature of the town itself. Passing through the tunnel and descending
Tombstone Canyon, one sees on both sides a “colorful disarray” of homes precariously perched along
the canyon’s steep sides. These homes, mostly restored and inhabited, appear “stapled to the
mountainsides” and seem “about to tumble into the street.” Bisbee was once described as a town “three
miles long, three blocks wide, and three acres high.” It is the homes—often stacked four high—not
mountains, that earn this three-acre moniker. Narrow, winding streets discourage car use. Many of the
1 Brian Lambert, “Remote Bisbee a mine of activity,” The San Diego Union-Tribune, February 9, 1992, in the
Tourism vertical file, Shattuck Memorial Research Library, Bisbee Mining and Historical Museum, Bisbee, Arizona
[hereafter BMHM].
2 Angela Cara Pancrazio, “Arizona’s hidden Shangri-La,” The Arizona Republic, July 18, 2002; Dayton Fandray, “Back
to Bisbee,” in Alaska Airlines Magazine (September 2001): 36, in the Tourism VF, BMHM; “Lawrence W. Cheek,
“Queen of the Desert” in Sunset (April 2005): 170, in the Bisbee 3 – News Clippings vertical file, Polly Rosenbaum
State Archives & History Building, Phoenix, Arizona [hereafter AZSA].

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homes lack direct road access. One elderly woman, it is said, “climbs 67 steps to reach her front door.”
All four floors of the old Bisbee High School had an entrance on ground level.3
Iron railings, homemade
retaining walls, and terraces abound throughout the canyon. Steps and staircases bind together
disparate sections of a labyrinthine gulch not ideally suited for habitation. At dusk each day, crowds
converge on the local post-office to pick up mail. The town’s vertical topography prohibits local mail
delivery.
Building on the analysis of Beckley and Hutchinson, this chapter sheds light on the murky
contours of the term “postindustrial.” Bisbee underwent a radical transition from an extractive to service
economy in 1975 when Phelps Dodge ceased mining operations. Foundational in this transformation was
a grassroots effort culminating in the debut of the Queen Mine Tour in 1976. Much changed as locals
embraced tourism after decades of exclusive reliance on mining. Much also remained unchanged.
Whether we look at the remaining infrastructure within the built environment, the scarred landscapes
permanently transformed by large-scale mining operations, or the continuation of active mining in the
surrounding region, we see no clear-cut break with the industrial past. What truly rendered Bisbee
postindustrial, then, was the historic preservation efforts that locked in place a historicized image of
industry on which the city built its tourist infrastructure. When whispers of a return of the copper
3
Lambert, “Remote Bisbee”; Lowell Parker, “Bisbee a colorful setting for equally colorful characters,” The Arizona
Republic, February 24, 1974; Lowell Parker, “Living in Bisbee requires stout heart, legs – and lungs,” The Arizona
Republic, February 25, 1974, in the Bisbee 4 – News Clippings VF, AZSA; See Bisbee, Arizona – it’s different!,
brochure, c. 1960s, in the Brochures, Pamphlets, Flyers, ca. 1908-1950 VF, AZSA; Roger Rapoport, “Bisbee struggles
for survival and emerges victorious,” The Oakland Tribune, May 31, 1987, in the Tourism VF, BMHM.
Figure 64 – View of Downtown Bisbee from Highway 80 overlook. Photo courtesy of author.

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industry arose in the early twenty-first century, this possibility was met not with enthusiasm, but
hostility. A return of industry was no longer considered compatible with the place Bisbee had become—
quaint, clean, and above all else, historic. This chapter thus argues that Bisbee’s postindustrial character
stems not from the departure of copper mining in 1975, but from the reticence the community held
towards its return in the ensuing years.
The reasons for opposition to a return of mining were manifold but stemmed in part from a
radically changed economy and demographics. Anxiety also derived from the fact that, even though
Phelps Dodge had ceased operations, the industrial footprint of a century of extraction still lingered.
Disappearance did not always follow deindustrialization, and residents continue to grapple with the
human and environmental tolls wrought from years of resource extraction. Bisbee’s manifestation of
“boom” derives from these scars, and the preserved boomtown situated among them. The scars on and
within the city of Bisbee tell this story to a degree not seen in Beckley or Hutchinson, and they strangely
reinforce the municipality’s drive to deliberately craft a historicized, industrial image of the town for
tourism. Ore carts and mining equipment dot the downtown tourist hub, while much of the town’s color
inadvertently appears burnt red from erosion of copper and acidic runoff. Bisbee remains a city that
resolutely maintains the look and feel of a turn-of-the-century mining town, but it is but one of many
places that have embraced mining as a theme with which to sell the past. This chapter concludes with a
brief comparative look at some of these other examples—all of which collectively give credence to the
(false) notion that mining has vanished from the United States—that it is a relic of the past and that we
have moved on to a newer, cleaner, brighter future.
An Extractive Century Made Visible
Bisbee was once the world’s largest copper mining town. A party of prospectors made the first
mining claim in the area in 1877. By the 1880s, the Phelps Dodge Corporation had begun establishing its

209
own mining claims in the area and buying out small firms. After a large ore body was found between
their claims, Phelps Dodge merged with the Copper Queen Mining Company in 1885.4 The most
prominent tunnel would come to be known as the Copper Queen Mine. Nearby smelters filled the
canyon with smoke as thousands of men arrived in droves to extract and process ore around the clock.
Before its closure, Bisbee’s labyrinth of mines would produce billions of pounds of copper, along with
millions of ounces of other rare metals.
Billing itself the “Queen of the Mining Camps,” Bisbee at the turn of the century was a bustling
metropolis.5 At its peak, the hill town boasted close to 25,000 residents and at one point had the largest
population of any city between St. Louis and San Francisco. Profit generated from the mines enabled
Phelps Dodge and its proprietors to erect numerous brick buildings that have endured to this day. There
was (and remains) the Victorian-style Copper Queen Hotel, built in 1904 and once considered the finest
hotel between Los Angeles and El Paso.6 A stock exchange, various churches, schools, homes, and a
Spanish-style post office also dot the landscape. Several stores, including a J. C. Penney and a Phelps
Dodge mercantile store, served the local population. The notorious Brewery Gulch was home to over 40
saloons, brothels, and gambling houses where miners spent a great deal of time when not underground.
Since 1927, a 75-foot white “B” has overlooked the city from Chihuahua Hill.7 The Cochise County seat
moved from Tombstone to Bisbee in 1929.8
4
“Highlights of Bisbee’s History,” undated, in the Bisbee 4 – News Clippings VF, AZSA.
5 Rapoport, “Bisbee struggles for survival”. For an overview of Arizona’s leading role in the nation’s copper industry
and its decline, see Charles K. Hyde, Copper in America: The United States Copper Industry from Colonial Times to
the 1990s (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998), 111-211.
6
Jeff Baker, “Mine Your Own Bisbee,” The Oregonian, January 7, 2001, in the Tourism VF, BMHM; Kenneth Arline,
“Bisbee Good Spot to Make a Bet,” The Phoenix Gazette, February 14, 1974, in the Bisbee 4 – News Clippings VF,
AZSA.
7 Rapoport, “Bisbee struggles for survival”; Jim Cox, “B has looked over town for nearly 60 years,” The Bisbee
Observer, September 11, 1986, in the Tourism VF, BMHM.
8 Richard Shelton, Going Back to Bisbee (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992), 109.

210
As the decades of mining wore on, the toll on Bisbee’s built environment became increasingly
visible. Mining in the first few decades had all occurred underground. Despite the frenzy and smoke from
the smelters, the mountains themselves underwent little exterior alteration. This changed in the 1920s,
when open pit mining began restructuring the layout and feel of Bisbee itself. Following World War I and
several years of increased demand for copper, Phelps Dodge authorized surface-strip mining of lowgrade porphyry ore to begin at Sacramento Hill, a mountain framing the south of Bisbee. Production
began in 1917. By 1929, the hill had morphed into a pit. Company crews drilled holes into the mountain
and filled them with explosives. Some recall that when seeing the blast, “the entire top of the mountain
seemed to rise in the air, shake itself and then settle back.” Open-pit miners reached a depth of 605 feet
below the original surface, removing more than 32,000,000 tons of material, two-thirds of it waste.9
Work began on the Lavender Pit, named after a Phelps Dodge official, in 1954. Mining at the new
pit employed many of the same methods as before, though on unprecedented scale. Crews again used
steam shovels, but the new ones were electric-powered and four times larger. 46,000,000 tons of barren
land was mined and trucked to nearby dumps, costing $25,000,000 before any usable ore could be
extracted. In some sections, this meant as much as 350 feet of waste had to be removed before reaching
ore. By 1966, the pit had already reached a depth of 800 feet and half a mile in width. The pit’s
concentric circles would expand until December 1974. Within that twenty-year period, Phelps Dodge
relocated 250 houses, rerouted Highway 80 to the crater’s east rim to accommodate its growth, and
altogether removed the main line of the Southern Pacific railway into town. The physical transformation
had completely erased the suburbs of Upper Lowell, Jiggerville, and the Johnson Addition from the
9
Lynn R. Bailey, Bisbee: Queen of the Copper Camps (Tucson: Westernlore Press, 1983), 135-36; “Bisbee: Copper
Queen was foundation for growth,” in Pay Dirt [Phelps Dodge: A Copper Centennial, 1881-1981, supplement]
(Summer 1981): 28; “Lavender Pit, Sacramento Pit,” leaflet, May 1986, in the Bisbee 2 – Brochures, Pamphlets,
Flyers, ca. 1950s – 1990s, AZSA.

211
landscape. By 1974, the combination of exhausted ore reserves and a decline in copper demand and
prices worldwide signaled the end, but the Lavender Pit had left its mark.10
Despite earning only modest profits for Phelps Dodge, the Lavender Pit fundamentally reshaped
the town’s topography and character. In addition to 250 relocated homes, it required those living in the
communities of Warren, Lowell, and San Jose to commute past a gaping hole alongside Highway 80
when driving into downtown Bisbee. While the open-pit mining process eliminated Sacramento Hill from
view, it created new mountains. Waste Dump Number 7 now frames much of neighborhoods of Warren
and what is left of Lowell. This mountain of waste encroaches into many residents’ backyards. Mine
dumps are not unusual in open-pit operations, but Number 7’s proximity to residential areas
distinguishes it from the norm. No longer hidden from view, open-pit mining brought the sights, sounds,
and smells to the forefront of the lived experience in town. A constant haze of brown dirt and dust hung
over town while the din and destruction of large machines and vehicles blasted and transported earth
from one place to another. During open-pit operations, life in Bisbee would grind to a halt every day at
10 Bailey, Queen of the Copper Camps, 139-40; “Bisbee: Copper Queen was foundation for growth,” Pay Dirt, 32.
The original Sacramento Pit crater became subsumed within the significantly larger Lavender Pit, and thus nothing
of Bisbee’s first open pit remains. For an in-depth look at the effects of open-pit mining on surrounding
communities, see Brian James Leech, The City that Ate Itself: Butte, Montana and Its Expanding Berkeley Pit (Reno:
University of Nevada Press, 2018).
Figures 65 and 66 – Postcard views of Sacramento Pit and Lavender Pit, with view of Tombstone Canyon and downtown Bisbee
in background of the latter. Author’s personal collection.

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3:25pm. School buses would pull to the side of the road while some would take photos off their walls
five minutes before 3:30, waiting for the blasting to finish. “All activities in town,” Bill Carter writes,
“were organized around this daily act of destruction.”11 While residents’ lives changed forever with this
more visible form of industry, it did offer visitors new marvels to view.
Tourism had served to boost Bisbee’s appeal, albeit only in small part, long before its transition
to a service economy in the 1970s. The Bisbee Chamber of Commerce formed in 1905, and brochures
promoting the town began circulating as early as 1900. Climate was the main draw, with adages such as
“Nature’s Solarium” and “Air conditioned by nature” filling early-century tourist brochures.12 The
Sacramento and Lavender Pits changed this. By 1936, Bisbee was attracting a “considerable tourist
trade.” “A picturesque, romantic western mining town,” the town had a “quaint personality that comes
with years of association with the mining industry. As they will tell you there, ‘It’s the kind of place you’d
see in the movies and want to visit.’” The Chamber of Commerce was said to be arranging trips through
the mines and smelters (in nearby Douglas), though there is no evidence that this ever became an
established practice. An attraction that was immensely popular was the Sacramento Pit. Although
excavation ended in the early 1930s, visitors continued to pull off the side of the road to view the crater
in the ensuing decades.13
In the 1950s, Bisbee’s “biggest tourist attraction and most recent mining development” were
one in the same: the Lavender Pit. The Chamber of Commerce erected a public viewpoint from the
rerouted U.S. Highway 80. One article claimed, “You should try to be in Bisbee… at 3:25 p.m. Monday
11 Bill Carter, Boom, Bust, Boom: A Story about Copper, the Metal that Runs the World (New York: Scribner, 2012),
21.
12 Tom Vaughan, “Tourist brochures not a new way to draw tourists to area,” Bisbee Review, October 6, 1985, in
the Tourism VF, BMHM; Nature’s Solarium, brochure, undated; “Facts and Figures” Bisbee Chamber of Commerce,
in the Bisbee 1- Brochures, Pamphlets, Flyers, ca. 1908-1950 VF, AZSA.
13 “Bisbee Retains Early Romance despite Growth as Modern City,” November 22, 1936, in the Bisbee 4 – News
Clippings VF, AZSA.

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through Friday. That’s when explosives are detonated in 60-foot holes drilled into the benches.” The
writer then details the methods of loading and transport to either crushers or waste dumps, encouraging
visitors to watch these massive industrial processes unfold. The same writer then went on to note that
there is some concern in town about what might happen when the last blast is detonated at Lavender
Pit. The writer remained optimistic. “Lady Luck may again smile on Bisbee through the discovery of still
greater orebodies.”14 This luck would not arrive. Pit operations were shut down in December 1974. All
mining operations were closed shortly thereafter, on June 13, 1975.
Combatting Obsolescence as a Community
Bisbee in the 1970s was a place in transition. For almost a century, locals had relied on the
extraction and refining of copper to make a living before Phelps Dodge’s departure in 1975. The change
was not without warning. The closure “had been forecast a number of years in advance,” said Richard
Graeme, when Phelps Dodge Corporation announced in its 1967 annual report that ore reserves were
nearly exhausted. The company began relocation efforts to other production sites in Arizona and New
Mexico, transferring 600 employees. 300 miners retired, with another 300 permanently laid off. Only 30
men were retained for small-scale leaching operations that continued mostly at the waste dumps.
Graeme, an engineer for Phelps Dodge, believed the mines closed due to a combination of copper being
produced more cheaply abroad and increasing health, safety, and environmental regulations, all of which
raised the costs of doing business. The last thing Phelps Dodge asked Graeme to do was calculate the
remaining reserves underground.
The company closed the mines despite the reserves offering an “excess of five years of mining
still in place,” likely due to the added regulations which rendered continued operations unprofitable.
14 Kenneth Arline, “There’s no place like Bisbee,” The Phoenix Gazette, April 6, 1972, in the Bisbee 4 – News
Clippings VF, AZSA.

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Added to this was the cyclical nature of price fluctuations in metal mining more generally, and it
becomes clear why so many places like Bisbee closed shop in the 1970s and 1980s.15 For Bisbee this
meant a massive population drain, and the loss not just of its million-dollar-a-month payroll, but the
myriad establishments Phelps Dodge had a hand in creating and running, such as the hospital, store, and
library. One writer remarked that “paternalism had sapped the town’s initiative.” The company had long
supported many of the town’s “whims and wishes,” which had resulted in a new swimming pool, a Little
League park, and a civic center in the past, in addition to the more essential amenities. Their exit
ushered in a political and economic vacuum, but also left behind a built environment ripe with
opportunity for redevelopment.16
In The Deindustrialization of America, Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison elaborate on why
the 1970s in particular became the moment in time when capital flight from America’s industrialized
centers became the preferred solution to dwindling profits. They note that increasing international
competition from Japan and Germany and pushback from the mid-century success of organized labor
both factored into the chronology of disinvestment. From the corporate perspective, systematic
disinvestment became “a necessary strategy, and from a technological perspective, a feasible one.”17
“Permissive” technology in communications (the computer) and transportation (wide-bodied cargo jets)
15 Richard Graeme, interview by Susan Wille, Arizona Memory Project, February 23, 2012, Interview with Richard
Graeme - Bisbee Memoir Project - Arizona Memory Project (azlibrary.gov); Bailey, Queen of the Copper Camps,
141. Employment in the industry declined from 150,000 in 1950 to just 34,000 by 1986. See Hyde, Copper in
America, 189.
16 Elinor Lenz, “A Dying Copper Town Now Wants to Mine, and Purify, its Past,” The New York Times, February 4,
1973, in the Bisbee 3 – News Clippings VF, AZSA; Bailey, Queen of the Copper Camps, 144.
17 Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community
Abandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry (New York: Basic Books, 1982), 16. Bluestone and Harrison
furthermore argue that the “runaway shops”—e.g. physical relocations or closings—are just the tip of the iceberg.
Disinvestment and deindustrialization of an area occur in more ways than just plant closings. For example,
productivity can be whittled down and reallocated slowly so the death seems more natural. Many plants were
often milked for cash and then abandoned, with the reaped profits being spent elsewhere rather than in
modernizing plant equipment to keep it alive and well. This “urge to merge,” as the economists term it, became
standard practice in the face of the worldwide economic crisis of the 1970s. Companies were more likely to
diversify rather than modernize. One example they provide, for instance, is Mobil Oil’s purchase of the
Montgomery Ward department store chain in 1976.

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facilitated global expansion and decentralized production that became more “footloose” than ever
before. The fluidity of capital, therefore, pitted corporate decision-makers against local communities
such as Bisbee who remained, in contrast, rooted in place. Such communities, moreover, were not
confined to what we traditionally view as the nation’s Rust Belt. Already by 1982, for example, Bluestone
and Harrison had highlighted the fact that almost “half the jobs lost to plant closings (and relocations)
during the 1970s occurred in the Sunbelt states of the South and the West.”18
This struggle against capital and community, one increasingly mobile and the other fixed in
space, is of key importance to the study of postindustrial tourism. What these corporations left behind
when expanding production elsewhere—in this case an extensive network of underground mines and a
massive hole in the ground—became the solution for the local community to seize back a sense of
control they had lost through the disinvestment of their community. While never fully replacing the lost
jobs from an economic perspective, gaining control of some of these former means of production
provided local communities with a chance to salvage a bit of the identity, meaning, and sense of
community embedded within their former worksites. During this period of transition, locals had already
begun considering what a postindustrial economy might look like and turned to the past as recourse for
present ills. Drafting of the town’s first zoning ordinance, for example, set aside one-and-a-half miles of
“Old Bisbee” as a historic preservation site. This area was considered sacrosanct. No buildings could go
up or activities go on that were considered “out of sync with the historic mining camp motif.”19
Bisbeeites from the first sign of trouble doubled down on the copper legacy on which they had
exclusively relied for their livelihoods, precluding economic growth in any way other than through
promotion of its soon-to-be historic, industrial image.
18 Ibid., 9-10. Even Sun Belt boomtowns such as Houston that seemingly prosper from the changes ended up
experiencing a dearth of social services and public infrastructure that were unable to adequately keep up with
“unplanned and anarchic hyper-investment” (91).
19 Lenz, “A Dying Copper Town.”

216
Almost immediately after the mines closed, a team of architects, historians, and art historians
under contract with the Arizona State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) conducted intermittent survey
work between 1976 and 1979. This intel resulted in the listing of the Bisbee Historic District—with 80
contributing structures of various architectural styles—to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP)
in 1980. The Bisbee Historic District, the nomination form stated, is “essentially turn-of-the-century,
roughly 1895 to 1915, when the community had the resources and stability for major construction.”
Most towns would have “razed or drastically remodeled” such buildings by now, the writers pointed out,
“but in Bisbee economic conditions have not warranted such an investment.”20 The turn-of-the-century
economic boom that Bisbee experienced, as well as the lulls in production after World War I, both
contributed to the inadvertent conservation of a great deal of late-nineteenth and early-twentiethcentury buildings. The listing of downtown Bisbee on the NRHP in 1980 laid the foundation on which
Bisbee would build a visually appealing and thematically historicized tourist destination. What the city
needed, however, was a flagship attraction to draw the crowds to its historic district.
Mayor Charles “Chuck” Eads spearheaded the effort to rehabilitate the Copper Queen Mine as a
tourist attraction in 1975. “When the idea of an underground mine tour as a visitor attraction occurred
to us, the obstacles seemed forbidding,” wrote Eads in 1977. Eads put together a group of veteran
miners who helped demonstrate how this transformation might be achieved. Despite the departure of
Phelps Dodge, many in the corporation’s local branch, such as then superintendent Henry Clark,
remained amenable to helping Bisbee ease the transition away from mining. By June 1975, the City of
Bisbee had secured a ten-year lease from Phelps Dodge for work redeveloping the Queen tunnel. The
city had looked at the nearby Higgins mine, as well, but settled on the Queen. Its historic status,
20 Marjorie H. Wilson, Janet Stewart, James Garrison, Billy G. Garnett, and Thomas S. Rothweiler. Bisbee Historic
District National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form, p. 10. 1980. On file, State Historic Preservation
Office, Arizona State Parks, Phoenix, Arizona.

217
relatively stable condition, and proximity to downtown Bisbee all played a part in this decision. The
Queen had opened in 1915 as a haulage tunnel, used to get men and equipment in, and ore back out. It
closed in 1943.21 In the 1970s the shaft functioned as a training site in which helmet crews practiced
extinguishing fires while sealing off and bratticing the drift. In 1976, the Economic Development
Administration awarded the city of Bisbee a federal grant of $807,000 to help offset the impact of mine
closure. Governor Raul H. Castro announced that these funds would be used for tourism development.
The grant would “enhance the city’s scenic and historic resources and, at the same time, create jobs for
Bisbee’s unemployed.”
22
The combination of civic-minded volunteer locals, support from Phelps Dodge, and the federal
grant funds helped transform the Queen Mine into a safe and accessible tourist site over the next year.
City council members, off-duty firemen and policemen, retired miners, and other locals banded together
to volunteer technical assistance on questions of redevelopment and safety, supplies and equipment,
and labor. “Civic consciousness made it possible,” wrote Eads.23 This band of locals resembled the
shopfloor workers whom Kathryn Marie Dudley interviews in The End of the Line: New Lives in
Postindustrial America. These men and women who worked in the automotive manufacturing plant in
Kenosha, Wisconsin feared that not just their jobs, but their way of life and “the sense of community
that gives us all a meaningful place in the world” were at stake when the plant closed.24
This value system of mutuality and collective solidarity, experienced throughout working-class
communities across the country, once again came to the forefront in the grassroots effort to redevelop
21 Sue Doerfler, “Visitors dig Queen of mines,” The Arizona Republic, September 22, 1996, in the Tourism VF,
BMHM.
22 “Bisbee Shows Her Mettle,” in Arizona Living, 8, no. 14 (July 8, 1977): 10; Michael Maresh, “Tour marks 30 years
of going underground,” Herald/Review, 2006, in the Tourism VF, BMHM; Chuck Eads, “Bisbee Queen Mine Tour
History,” interview, February 9, 1994, (494) Bisbee Queen Mine Tour History - YouTube.
23 “Bisbee Shows Her Mettle,” 1.
24 Kathryn Marie Dudley, The End of the Line: New Lives in Postindustrial America (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1994), xi-xii.

218
the Queen Mine. Eads and company used the federal grant money to redo a portion of the visitor
building and buy additional equipment to redevelop the site—notably, mucking machines and timber. In
addition to leasing the mine for a negligible amount, Phelps Dodge donated approximately $168,000 in
the form of timber, tracks, track spikes, and other materials needed for redevelopment. The company
also donated the mine cars and locomotives, as well as hard hats, slickers, and helmet lights for visitors
once the tours were underway.25 Over the course of six months, volunteers removed thousands of tons
of caved-in muck, retimbered the main tunnel where necessary, and replaced hundreds of feet of track
to render the site safe and accessible for tourists.26 They also installed signs from the ceiling showing the
distance traveled from the mine’s entrance. The biggest issues were the cave-ins and rockslides that had
developed over the years of disuse. One cave-in had been over 100 feet thick.27
Doug Graeme, Richard’s son and current Mine Tour Manager, noted that during redevelopment,
the volunteer miners filled in many of the open holes that connected the seven levels of the Queen
Mine. (Other area mines had up to 36 levels.) This was done presumably for safety reasons despite the
potential allure that keeping these open might have created. Bisbee boasts 29 major mines, each
interconnected by approximately 2,700 miles of tunnels within a three-mile radius.28 Many of these
mines had multiple levels linked by shaft elevators. Visitors within the Queen Mine remain on the third
level, with two below and four above each separated by 100 feet. The decision to close these holes
despite their obvious appeal demonstrates one of the ways in which safety trumped access during the
mine’s redevelopment, despite the possibility of keeping them open for visual appeal with physical
safeguards in place.
25 “Bisbee Mine Tour Opens,” February 12, 1976, in the Tourism VF, BMHM; Eads, “Bisbee Queen Mine Tour
History,” interview.
26 “Bisbee Shows Her Mettle,” 10.
27 Doug Graeme, interview with author, at the site, March 30, 2022.
28 Carter, Boom, Bust, Boom, 17.

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In the present-day tour, visitors drive past an incline shaft that descends at a 45-degree angle
roughly 400 to 500 feet below. This shaft would have transported ore via cable-drawn carts to the
surface. Timbers and fencing block access to the shaft, but still enable visitors to peek down into the
abyss. “In the 1950s kids used to sneak in here and play,” said Richard Graeme while giving a tour in
1996. A wooden staircase that descended to the bottom of the incline shaft was a favorite spot. In 1955,
some kids lit tumbleweeds on fire and threw them down the shaft, burning the wood that held it open
and causing a cave-in.29
Doug Graeme noted that timbers need replaced every ten years or so. This is a
unique aspect of a tourist mine. In an active mine, workers never remain in any one place that long, so
the timbers need only last six months to a year, at most, before miners move on to a different section. As
a result, he has needed to retrain miners who help with maintenance on construction methods more
durable than would be typically needed. Graeme has also added several additional features to
modernize the site’s safety and accessibility precautions, including power and water lines, and a 50-
horsepower fan and air doors to control ventilation.30
29 Doerfler, “Visitors dig Queen of mines.”
30 Interview, Doug Graeme, March 30, 2022.
Figures 67 and 68 – Views of volunteer workers hauling out and sifting through muck from cave-ins during the Queen Mine’s
redevelopment into a tourist attraction, c. 1975. The photographer, likely a fellow volunteer of the redevelopment process, tended to focus
on the cave-ins and rockslides that gave the volunteers the most trouble. These photos highlight the extent to which local volunteers had to
go to clear out and rebuild the mine with manual labor. Photos courtesy of Doug Graeme, Queen Mine Tours.

220
The mine was not opened to the public until it had passed federal, state, and Phelps Dodge
safety inspections.31 It initially opened on February 1, 1976, but only on weekends. By September, it was
open seven days a week. In 1977, the mine tour employed 22 people, including a janitor, a cashierreceptionist, and several registered tour guides and watchmen. Tickets at this time cost $3.50 per
adult.32 The Queen Mine officially opened in 1978, despite two years of tours already underway.33 The
initial wave of visitors walked into and out of the mine as work continued near the back of the tunnel.
The original proposed tour would take visitors more than 6,000 feet along a looping route. An article
published just days after the unofficial debut in February 1976 noted that “while there is still a lot to be
done on the tunnel, and rock and earth are being moved from the further end, more than 1,800 feet of
diggings have been cleared, timbered, and made safe for visitors.”34 At some point, those in charge
considered this distance to be sufficient and halted work on the more ambitious plan. Graeme noted
that the developers came very close to completing the loop route, spending a great deal of money on
further cave-in clearance, but ultimately fell short.35 The growing success of the shorter route from
February 1976 onward likely contributed to this decision. Around when work on the loop route stopped,
visitors began taking “man cars” formerly used to transport men to and from their work areas. The cars
were pulled by battery-operated locomotives and entered and exited the same tunnel.
31 “Bisbee Mine Tour Opens,” February 12, 1976.
32 “Mine tour draws visitors to Bisbee,” The Daily Dispatch, February 9, 1977; “Bisbee Shows Her Mettle,” 10;
“Visitors Information on MINE TOURS, October 1, 1977, in the Tourism VF, BMHM.
33 1978 marked the official debut of public access to the Queen Mine, but there had been infrequent visits long
before. A Masonic Grand Lodge of Arizona meeting had been held in a cave in the mine in 1897. Floorboards were
laid for the occasion. Others held dances there from time to time. In 1899, members of the Institute of American
Mining Engineers, and their families, were escorted through portion of the Queen Mine. Of note was their escort
through one of the large stopes, which had been “brilliantly lighted by electricity.” Afterwards, lunch “was
partaken of in true miner’s fashion, an experience which was greatly enjoyed by the whole party.” “Bisbee Guests:
Entertainment of the Mining Engineers on their Late Visit,” Arizona Bulletin, October 27, 1899, in the Bisbee 1 –
Brochures, Pamphlets, Flyers, ca. 1908-1950 VF, AZSA.
34 “Bisbee Mine Tour Opens,” February 12, 1976.
35 Doug Graeme, zoom interview by Josh Poorman, March 3, 2022.

221
Underground and Around Town
Before visitors enter the Queen Mine, they are furnished with slickers or safety vests, a hard-hat,
and a battery-pack light. Visitors don their gear and straddle the padded seats of the narrow-gauge “man
car” that transports them 1,800 feet underground. Once the tour guide—usually a veteran miner—rings
the bell, the group enters the mountain. At just eight feet high and six feet wide, the tunnel can feel
claustrophobic as the train briskly makes its way. Loud clanking of the rails and a cool breeze from the
constant 47-degree temperature heighten the sense of transport into a new and unfamiliar place. The
tour of the Queen Mine entails several stops, requiring visitors to disembark from the “man car” and
gather around a designated stop. Similar to Beckley, the miners, their work, and their hardships again
remain at the forefront.
Much of this attention to labor focuses on the layout of metal mines, their multiple levels, and
the unique challenges miners faced navigating this subterranean maze. One of the first stops, for
example, takes visitors to a series of four sealed transfer chutes, which enabled miners to move ore to
levels with exits. Behind the four chute doors rests a shaft that ascends over 300 feet and is 20 feet
across and 15 feet deep. The chutes have remained in place since the nineteenth century and are
embedded into the mountain. Despite their stabilization, miners on staff inspect them every day before
Figures 69 and 70 – Views of exterior of Queen Mine Tour building, with tunnel entrance on the right, and view of narrow gauge
“man car” exiting the tunnel with Mayor Chuck Eads in crowd, c. 1975. Photos courtesy of Doug Graeme, Queen Mine Tours.

222
tours begin to ensure there is no movement. Trammers, usually young men between the ages of fifteen
to twenty, would wait in line to open one of the doors, fill their one-ton carts about three quarters full,
and push it along the tracks to dump it before returning for more. These men worked ten hours a day for
six days a week.36
Several stops along the tour deal with the various modes of transportation used throughout the
intricate and interconnected system of tunnels. Mules came underground in 1903 and were trained to
pull four carts at a time. Once underground, they often remained in the mine for three to four years
without resurfacing. They were given the best feed available—oats and alfalfa—and had individual stalls
where they were groomed and inspected by a vet every day. Contrary to popular belief, the animals did
not go blind underground, but the dearth of light did strain their eyes. When finally taken aboveground,
they would put bags over their heads and slowly reacclimate them to light, after which point Phelps
Dodge would give the mules away to a rancher in need. Given their intelligence, stoutness, and strength,
mules were extremely expensive. One could purchase 10 to 12 horses for the price of one mule. The
electric trolley came underground in 1908 but mules were still used until the 1930s. To prevent conflict
between the different conveyances, Phelps Dodge kept the two separated by level. Each level of the
multi-story mine would have either trolleys or mules, but not both.
Guides also discuss the aluminum bicycles introduced in the late 1960s that bosses would use to
get around the mines. Superintendents spent much of their time walking, often 12 miles a day, to see
each miner twice, once before lunch and once after. Bicycles made this trek easier, but often got in the
way. At the deepest section of the tour, visitors examine a turn-of-the-century nine-man cage, used to
transport men, mules, and supplies to the various levels of the mine. The cager would ride the elevator
up and down, using a bell to communicate in morse code with men on the surface controlling it. If a non36 Tour of Queen Mine taken by author in Bisbee, Arizona, March 29, 2022.

223
certified cager would grab the rope, they were immediately fired. The cage killed more men than did
cave-ins.37 Despite visitors remaining on only one level, the various topics collectively give visitors a real
sense of the mine’s multi-level layout and the conveyances that moved men and material in and out of
the mountain.
Visitors ascend 36 steps into an open area called a stope as the final stop on the tour. Of the
thousands of stopes mined out in Bisbee, the one included on the tour route was the first, and the
smallest. Stopes correspond with masses of copper discovered that have since been mined out, leaving
behind rooms that appear as if naturally formed caves. Floorboards create a level surface with an
additional 33 feet of space below. Guides use the stope setting to describe the extraction and refining
methods for precious metals. The ore mined in places such as Bisbee is impregnated with a variety of
37 Ibid. Similar to the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine, Bisbee’s Queen Mine Tour retains focus on the miners and their
work underground. This focus is not inevitable, however, given the continued lease agreement with FreeportMcMoRan to run the tour. Twelve miles south of Tucson, the ASARCO Mineral Discovery Center offers a look at a
corporate-run tourist program. Opened in 2007, ASARCO’s facility offers “the only public tour of a modern working
copper mine in Southern Arizona,” taking visitors by bus to the edge of their open-pit operations and into the
grinding mill buildings. The facility also features a free exhibit center, where visitors learn about the many ways
that mines, and copper specifically, have built the world around us. A free handout reminds visitors that “your
house comes from a mine!” before listing the countless ways copper and other rare metals play a part in our daily
lives. This type of public relations, while effective and informative, are not present in Bisbee, where a stricter focus
on the miners remains front and center.
Figures 71 and 72 – Views of Queen Mine Tour, showing path the “man car” takes through narrow passageways, and a tour
guide explaining the complex blasting process crews would use to break the mountain. Photos courtesy of author.

224
metals, not just copper. Extraction by crushing, concentrating, and smelting the ore separated the
various metals.38 Despite the copper mine designation, Bisbee was also the third largest producer of gold
in the world at one point. The gold was all mined as copper. In other words, pure copper could not be cut
into smaller pieces—the “metal drills would get stuck and the miner would lose his equipment.” It was
only through ore processing that extraction and refining of pure metals could be produced.39 Through
1975, Bisbee produced 7.7 billion pounds of copper, 355 million pounds of zinc, 324 million pounds of
lead, 100 million ounces of silver, 2.7 million ounces of gold, and almost 11 million pounds of
manganese.40 Much of this would have come from the same ore bodies mined in places like the Queen
Mine, despite its narrow designation as a “copper” mine.
Doug Graeme started working at the Queen Mine Tours around 2006, after helping develop
Kartchner Caverns State Park in Benson, Arizona. At that time, the tour guides were all veteran miners. In
addition to their first-hand knowledge and experience, Graeme mentions that these men were able to
assist with repairs and maintenance when needed. The fact that the mines closed in 1975, however, has
meant that many of these guides have either retired or are too old to continue. In 2022, a few of the
guides had no prior experience working underground but were still trained extensively. Some guides
worked in open-pit mines. Above all else, Graeme looks for people who hold a deeper connection to the
local community, again evoking the collective, working-class solidarity that drove the site’s initial
redevelopment.41
Over the years, the city of Bisbee has employed guides not just for the Queen Mine Tour, but for
two additional tours as well: one of the Lavender Pit, and one of downtown Bisbee. The Lavender Pit
38 Ibid.
39 Doerfler, “Visitors dig Queen of mines.”
40 Richard Graeme, “Famous Mineral Localities: Bisbee, Arizona,” in The Mineralogical Record, 12, no. 5
(September-October 1981): 259.
41 Doug Graeme, zoom interview, March 3, 2022. Given the unique geological nature of Bisbee’s mountains, the
possibility of hiring geologists as guides also remains a possibility.

225
Open Mine Tour was a narrated, 13-mile bus tour conducted around the open pit and its surrounding
operations. The tour lasted approximately 90 minutes and took visitors to one of the copper dumping
areas, the leaching plant, and the rim of the Pit.42 The Bisbee City Bus Tour, meanwhile, offered a less
industrial-centric look at Bisbee’s built environment. Veteran miners chauffeured visitors “riding in a
comfortable van” through town, “starting with a ride up OK Street, down Youngblood Hill, through
Brewery Gulch and then up to High Road for a panoramic view of the historic district and the yawning
Lavender Pit.”43 Both tours were discontinued due to lack of demand, especially in relation to the
continued popularity of the subterranean tour. Despite offering intimate views of an eclectic downtown
and sweeping vistas of a man-made crater, it was the immersive and sometimes claustrophobic
experience of heading underground that has continued to enrapture tourists from around the world.
Statistically, the Lavender Pit and City Bus tours never competed with the Queen Mine Tour in
popularity. From February to December 1976, the Queen Mine Tour attracted 12,219 visitors on 1,884
tours while its Lavender Pit counterpart attracted only 3,662 visitors on 260 tours.44 This ratio continued
with the addition of the City Bus tours into the 1980s. In 1985, for example, the Queen Mine Tour
attracted 27,870 visitors, while the Pit tour attracted 1,711 and the City Bus tour 2,218 visitors.45 The
latter two tours did not share the same gradual growth as did the underground tour. In 1979, for
instance, the Queen Mine Tour invited 20,841 people underground. By 1988, this number had almost
doubled, bringing in 37,213.46 Numbers in the twenty-first century have somewhat leveled off, and the
42 Bisbee’s Queen Mine Tours, c. 1988, Bisbee Chamber of Commerce, in the Copper Queen – Bisbee VF, AZSA;
“Visitor Information on MINE TOURS,” October 1, 1977, BMHM. For another look at open-pit mine tourism, see
Leech, The City that Ate Itself, 141.
43 “Touring the Town: a comprehensive guide to the Queen of the Copper Camps,” The Bisbee Observer, 1990, in
the Tourism VF, BMHM. The city tour also headed southbound past the Pit to Lowell and Warren before visiting
San Jose, Bisbee’s most recent neighborhood.
44 Sandra M. McGovern to Harry F. Metz, May 6, 1977, in the Queen Mine Total Tours file, Copper Queen Mine
Archive, Bisbee, Arizona [hereafter CQMA].
45 “Tourists: 1980-1985,” in the Queen Mine Total Tours file, CQMA.
46 “Tourists for underground Queen Mine Tours from Jan 1979 to Jan 1989,” in the Queen Mine Total Tours file,
CQMA.

226
tour now averages around 50,000 guests per year.47 Those heading underground range from people
“seeing things they have never seen before” to retired miners and “people who have left Bisbee years
ago and returned.” For them, “it holds memories.”48
Doug Graeme believes industrial history is the biggest driving interest for those who come. The
experience of coming into the mine and feeling transported to a space unfamiliar and somewhat
dangerous holds real appeal. Another driving factor is interest in geology. Going underground offers the
chance to explain elements of paleohistory in unique ways, Graeme contends. Showing visitors what a
fault looks like, discussing earthquakes and displacement, deciphering the depth of the ocean by looking
at the rock, and other geological discussions would hit differently when presented underground.49
Despite the heavy focus on the industrial experience, a geology-centered tour remains a possible area of
expansion, even along the same route, as does incorporation of the connected escape shaft area that
exits right alongside U.S. Highway 80 overlooking a scenic view of downtown Bisbee.
Similar to the Beckley tour, however, the Queen Mine Tour has remained relatively unchanged
since its inception. Several factors have contributed to this, but the most significant remains the
prohibitive cost and liability concerns surrounding expansion. Attempts at diversifying the tour offerings
have not always ended well. On October 30, 2001, the Bisbee Kiwanis Club hosted a Haunted Mine Tour
fundraising event. One of the participants was Amy Armstrong of nearby Naco. Armstrong “positioned
herself in a niche in the darkened mine tunnel, straddling a bracing timber that gave way.” In the ensuing
confusion, she was “crushed between the wall and the train carrying visitors.” She died the next day in a
Tucson hospital. All parties involved agreed to a $2.5 million settlement.50 New management has since
47 Maresh, “Tour marks 30 years.”
48 “Mine tour draws visitors to Bisbee,” February 2, 1977.
49 Doug Graeme, interview, March 30, 2022.
50 Virginia F. Hodge, “Mine case settled for $2.5 million,” The Bisbee Observer, September 16, 2004, accessed on
September 7, 2022, Mine case settled for $2.5 million (fitzgeraldlaw.com).

227
eliminated opportunities for such accidents to occur, with visitors never permitted to wander off and
always under the supervision of two trained employees. Phoenix-based Freeport-McMoRan, Inc.
acquired Phelps Dodge in 2007 for $25 billion but retained the lease with the City of Bisbee for the
Queen Mine space.51 With no ties to a community whose mines have laid dormant since 1975, Freeport
has had much less incentive to remain invested in the Queen Mine Tour and its growth, despite still
holding the lease and remaining liable. Despite its abandonment of Bisbee, Phelps Dodge remained
willing to help with the mine tour’s development in 1975, both via its lease and its many in-kind
donations of materials and equipment. With Freeport in charge, this type of collaboration holds little
chance of success.
Theming Arizona’s Shangri-La
Regardless of what Bisbee would become as a tourist destination, the town’s image in the 1970s
was far from “quaint” and “historic” as many would characterize it today. Rather, Bisbee signified a place
of abandonment and decay. The collapse did not happen overnight. By the mid-1960s, Bisbee had
become a picture of “dismal neglect.” In 1966, only 70 out of 128 buildings in the central business district
remained open. Brewery Gulch fared worse, with only 18 of the 52 commercial buildings in operation.52
The end of mining in 1975 exacerbated the problem, initiating an exodus. Thom Wacker recalled that
people “had abandoned houses right and left.” Comparing it to the Oklahoma Dust Bowl his mother had
described to him, Wacker remembered seeing cars drive by with mattresses on top, suitcases on top of
them, and trailers behind with all kinds of furniture. Sally Holcomb recalls hearing that Bisbee had been
placed on the national ghost town register. Most anticipated the city would not survive. Once Phelps
Dodge left, infrastructure immediately began to crumble. Roads remained unfixed, parks went untended,
51 Steve James, “Freeport acquires Phelps Dodge, launches offering,” Reuters, March 19, 2007, accessed on
September 9, 2022, Freeport acquires Phelps Dodge, launches offering | Reuters.
52 Bailey, Queen of the Copper Camps, 141, 144.

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and steps left in disrepair.53 Many residents stayed behind, but the town was far from a bustling place.
Boarded windows up and down Main Street alerted passersby to a place on the verge of extinction.
The city’s real estate market collapsed overnight. Miners’ cottages went for as little as $1,000.
Fully furnished Victorian homes perched on cliffside terraces went for as little as $3,500.
54 Lured by these
rock-bottom prices, outsiders from around the country arrived in Bisbee to set up shop. The first wave of
these came to be known derisively as the Hippies. Artists, writers, poets, craftsmen, musicians, and
others brought the counterculture to Bisbee’s doorstep, and with it, a clash of cultures. Sally Holcomb
remembers that many in the initial wave of newcomers represented a lifestyle quite distinct from the
miners. Many were on drugs, not bathing, and walking through the parks playing flutes. Mining culture,
Holcomb reiterates, was a “very rambunctious, independent, rabble-rousing kind of thing.”
When a concoction of “pot, patchouli, and body odor” began wafting through downtown Bisbee,
the retirees who had remained behind took offense. Bill Epler, who published the Brewery Gulch Gazette,
led the charge against the newcomers, claiming they had “come here to set up [their] pot and food
stamp heaven.”55 Tensions often bubbled to the surface. Eventually, however, locals realized that far from
a homogenous group, many of the newcomers had established businesses and were helping bring
Bisbee back to life. Outsiders may have purchased homes for a bargain, but fixed them up and lived in
them nevertheless. Bisbee remained the Cochise County seat, providing a dependable payroll and a core
group of professionals, but downtown Bisbee simultaneously experienced a renaissance as an artists’
enclave, with art and craft galleries, theaters, and small shops abounding up and down Main Street.56 A
53 Thom Wacker and Sally Holcomb, “The Mine Closes, 1975,” interviews by Susan Wille, A People’s History of
Bisbee, 2014, compact disc.
54 Bailey, Queen of the Copper Camps, 144; 3.3.27.
55 Sally Holcomb and Joan Werner, “Cultures Collide, 1975” and “Newcomers Settle In,” interviews by Susan Wille,
A People’s History of Bisbee, 2014, compact disc.
56 Bisbee was not the only such town in the southwest to experience this demographic and cultural transition in
the 1970s. Marfa, Texas also underwent a bohemian renaissance when Minimalist artist Donald Judd relocated
there from New York in 1971 and began installing his art in historical spaces.

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unique culture blending old-time miners and counterculture artists emerged out of the 1970s, unified in
their mission to save the town.
The Queen Mine Tour laid the foundation for a transition to a service economy, but other
revitalization efforts sprang up around town as well. Local government officials established a zoning
commission and design review board to ensure adherence to the “historic mining camp motif” they
sought to present as their image to tourists. The Bisbee Council on the Arts and Humanities, established
in 1967, was one of several groups tasked with this mission. The Council’s flagship project quickly
became the Bisbee Mining and Historical Museum when Phelps Dodge donated their 1895 red-brick
General Office Building to the city in 1971 under the condition it be converted into a civic center and
museum.57 Exhibits inside include a recreated Mine Tunnel which shows the evolution of opening,
blasting, and mucking materials from early days to mechanization and large-scale open-pit operations.
One interpretive section covers the 1917 Bisbee Deportation, one of the most notorious labor
repressions of the twentieth century. In 1917, after union demands for safer working conditions, higher
wages, and an end to discrimination against foreign and minority workers went unmet, a group of
International Workers of the World launched a strike. Accusing them of being anti-war and pro-German,
vigilante groups led by local sheriff Harry Wheeler rounded up over 1,200 men with the support of the
copper companies. The men, mostly strikers, were marched two miles south to the Warren Ballpark,
where a kangaroo court weighed in on who would be released. Those who remained were shipped in
boxcars to New Mexico. Despite national outrage over the event, only one case went to trial and no one
57 “Bisbee Shows Her Mettle,” 2-3.

230
was ever found guilty.58 For such a notorious moment in the city’s history, one might expect there to be
more memorializing it than just an interpretive panel within the museum.
Outside the museum front, an array of mining machines frames the building. This hauling
equipment—a steam hoist and sheave wheel used to lift men and equipment out of the mines, a cage,
and various ore cars of different shapes and sizes—all visually reinforce the city’s rich mining legacy.
Other deliberately placed monuments and machines dot the landscape. A tipped over ore cart rests in
front of the Miners and Merchants Antique Center on Main Street, and a 1935 art deco sculpture of a
copper miner dedicated to “those virile men” sits at a prominent intersection further up Tombstone
Canyon. The Queen Mine Tour offers little to no reference of the deportation, and its memory is
conspicuously absent from a built environment that has doubled-down on maintaining its historic,
industrial landscape. One writer noted that “we argue over a monument to 9/11 but fail to build
prominent monuments to our own rich history.”59 It appears that physical preservation of Bisbee’s
industrial character remains selective at best, highlighting turn-of-the-century architecture, mining
machinery, and historic placenames but overlooking its conflicts.
As with many themed spaces, the visual hallmarks of the city’s mining legacy are highlighted
while much of the politically charged history falls by the wayside. The marketing strategy favors
presentation of Bisbee’s old-world charm paired with a distinctive industrial flavor to which tourists
might escape from the political realities of the present day. The general disregard for the Bisbee
Deportation within the built environment represents a broader trend in the historical erasure of labor58 Baker, “Mine your own Bisbee”; “Bisbee Shows Her Mettle.” For more on the Bisbee Deportation, see Katherine
Benton-Cohen, “Docile Children and Dangerous Revolutionaries: The Racial Hierarchy of Manliness and the Bisbee
Deportation of 1917,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 24, no. 2/3 (2003): 30-50.
59 Jon Talton, “Bisbee copper saga of ’17,” The Arizona Republic, November 26, 2006, in the Bisbee 3 – News
Clippings VF, AZSA. Even the Warren Ballpark, touted as the nation’s oldest continuously operating baseball field,
still exists. Surely commemoration of the Bisbee Deportation here would be an important addition for a
community over a century removed from the events. Locals did come together for the centennial to star in Bisbee
’17, a film made to begin grappling with the haunting legacy of the deportation.

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capital conflict. Part of this erasure involves the homogenization of Bisbee’s miners. It is easier to valorize
a generic image of a copper miner when their racial and ethnic identities have been compressed into a
homogeneous whole.60 While the Queen Mine Tour acknowledges the exploitative conditions miners
faced when working underground, it is easy to overlook the racial and ethnic divisions within this
working class. Perhaps omission of the Bisbee Deportation is a necessary evil from a tourist perspective.
Labor history is rarely considered a strong selling point, though Beckley has achieved success. Combining
this with immigration and deportation—topics that remain politically charged in the twenty-first
century—does no favors to a city fighting for tourist dollars.
Bisbee in the twenty-first century is nevertheless thriving. “Tourists, not copper, are the mother
lode today,” wrote one author in 2001. Bisbee saw upticks in visitation after the release of Tombstone in
1993, as well as after the opening of Kartchner Caverns State Park in Benson in 1999. The Queen Mine
Tour led the way in tourism, tallying 52,853 visitors in 2000. The Mining Museum, meanwhile, received
19,524 and the Visitors Center 36,932. The Queen Mine Tour earnings also help to operate the city. In
2005, the mine netted $88,000 which went to city services.61 More recently, Bisbee has achieved
national acclaim. USA Today named Bisbee the 2016 Best Historic Town in the Nation, an accolade that
has brought with it rising real estate values. A year later, it again ranked number two on Thrillist’s list of
fifteen best cities to relocate to before they become popular. Joan Werner, a business owner downtown,
60 From the 1880s onward, Bisbee was known as a “white man’s camp.” This designation originally referred to the
exclusion of Chinese, but eventually came to describe the racial hierarchy that prevented Mexican workers from
holding the most lucrative jobs underground. Eastern and southern European immigrants such as Italians, Slavs,
and Serbs occupied an “in-between” racial category that further complicated the hierarchy. During the Bisbee
Deportation, 80 percent of those shipped in boxcars to New Mexico were immigrants. Of those, one third were of
Mexican descent and another 40 percent were of Slavic descent. See Benton-Cohen, “Docile Children and
Dangerous Revolutionaries,” 32-33.
61 Michael Parnell, “A lode of tourists: more and more people are finding their way to Bisbee,” Herald/Review, April
22, 2001, in the Tourism VF, BMHM; Maresh, “Tour marks 30 years.”

232
noted that it took 30 to 35 years for the city to truly solidify its tourist base. Even then, “tourism is very
unstable, especially when you’re at the end of line.”62
One place that has done wonders for raising the city’s profile is the small portion of Lowell not
consumed by the Lavender Pit. In the 1930s, Lowelltown was “practically surrounded by mines.” These
mines themselves were absorbed as the concentric circles of the Lavender Pit spiraled outward, and
today all that remains of the town is one street, preserved in midcentury form with historic cars, signage,
and buildings. Resting just at the Pit’s southern rim, visitors often use the street as a backdrop for film
and video shoots.63 In the age of social media, this often means free advertising for the city. Since 1975,
Bisbee has undergone demographic, economic, and cultural changes while retaining much of its
industrial character, visuality, and ambiance. While most would say the city has turned a new leaf as a
service economy, a discussion of how Bisbee did not change might be just as, if not more, generative to
the topic of postindustrial tourism.
The Causes of Bisbee’s “Postindustrial” Moniker
Maintenance of Bisbee’s image as an industrial city was not just an aesthetic decision. It partly
derived from necessity. While strategic placement of an ore cart in a visible location certainly heightened
the city’s visual appeal as a turn-of-the-century industrial hub, much of this footprint simply could not be
altered or erased. For one, the behemoth Lavender Pit just south of town is not going anywhere. Bill
Carter, writing of his lived experience in Bisbee, remarks on how easy it is to forget “that one is driving
through a mountain that isn’t there anymore” when passing the pit on Highway 80. The sidewalk placed
on the edge of the pit for tourists has turned burnt red from erosion of copper and acidic runoff. This
62 Christine Steele, “Bisbee voted Best Historic Small Town,” Herald/Review, May 1, 2016; Monique Brand, “Bisbee
named best place to relocate,” The Bisbee Daily Review, August 23, 2017, in the Tourism VF, BMHM; Nick
Pavlovich, interview by Beverly Woods, February 23, 1993, BMHM, Nick Pavlovich interviewed by Beverly Woods -
Feb 23, 1993 (part 2) - Bisbee Mining & Historical Museum (bisbeemuseum.org).
63 “Bisbee Retains Early Romance”; “Day Trip from Tombstone – Historic and Tasty Lowell,” Tombstone Times,
September 2005, in the Lowell VF, AZSA.

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process has colored much of town’s man-made and natural surfaces, giving the entire place “a particular
hue of red” that reinforces its mining aesthetic.64 Much of the city’s infrastructure remained in dire need
of repair at the turn of the twenty-first century. Crumbling stairs and sidewalks and collapsing retaining
walls urged visitors to exercise caution when walking around. The most glaring issue was the exposure of
an old flood channel underneath a public parking lot on Main Street, forcing its closure. The 8,000-footlong Mule Gulch Tunnel was originally built by Bisbee’s mining companies to protect the city from
frequent floods that swept through the canyon. By the twenty-first century, the dilapidated flood
channel threatened not just the parking lot’s structural integrity, but that of many downtown businesses.
Commerce Street was built on top of the channel’s old timber ceiling and a wall of the channel also
served as the rear foundation to many Main Street businesses.65 Today, a roped-off “Inactive Mine”
entrance warns passerby to “Stay Out! Stay Alive” underneath Main Street and the public parking lot.
Perhaps the biggest reminder of Bisbee’s mining past are the tailings ponds and mine dumps
built with ton after ton of excavated rock from the Sacramento and Lavender Pits. The dumps often seem
too close for comfort once one realizes they are not natural mountains. Dump Number 7 frames
numerous homes in South Bisbee and Warren, with a small mountain of pulverized rock abutting
64 Carter, Boom, Bust, Boom, 19.
65 Ignacio Ibarra, “Bisbee Crumbling,” Arizona Daily Star, February 26, 2001, accessed on September 12, 2022,
Bisbee crumbling - Document - Gale OneFile: News (usc.edu).
Figures 73 and 74 – Views of Bisbee’s lingering industrial footprint. On the left, a warning sign posted above an abandoned mine
entrance, which runs beneath Main Street and a public parking lot. On the right, a view of the Mine Dump Number 7 abutting
several homes, with bulldozers moving atop the mountain. Photos courtesy of author.

234
people’s backyards. When Freeport-McMoRan acquired Phelps Dodge in 2007, part of the sale included
assumption of company obligations to reclaim polluted soils in Bisbee. Freeport began an environmental
remediation plan in 2008, which included testing households and their yards for contamination. To the
surprise of no one, arsenic and lead levels were often through the charts, likely from dump runoff but
also from decades of nearby smelters belching toxic fumes into the air. Phelps Dodge had exacerbated
the problem for many residents by terracing the town with dirt from its tailings ponds, which were still
laced with heavy metals from previous mining operations.66
The after-effects of Bisbee’s mining legacy, then, are far from just visual. They have seeped into
some resident’s homes, tainting their home-grown vegetables and putting their health at risk. Despite
stringent safety regulations in place, the Queen Mine Tour has not been without risk of shutting down
from unseen dangers. In 2013, Freeport-McMoRan informed the mayor that it had detected elevated
radon levels in the mine and would be terminating its lease in 60 days. The company told officials that
levels did not present a danger to tourists, but tour employees with long-term exposure could be at risk.
The city and Freeport eventually agreed to work together for a solution, including improved ventilation,
to allow tours to continue.67 This risk of closure in 2013, however, highlights a larger issue Bisbee and its
current service economy faces: the possibility that mining may return.
Despite Bisbee’s stark transition from an industrial to service economy, the idea that mining
could return eventually was not without merit. When the mines closed in 1975, many in the industry
believed it was a temporary stoppage. Doug Graeme notes that he has heard chatter about this
possibility well into the twenty-first century. During the Queen Mine’s redevelopment, many working on
its transformation viewed the project as a stopgap, not permanent. Some of the early work reflected this
66 Carter, Boom, Bust, Boom, 3-9.
67 Dawn Gilbertson, “Bisbee explores options to save tours of Queen mine,” The Arizona Republic, August 19, 2013,
in the Bisbee 3 – News Clippings VF, AZSA; Veronica M. Cruz, “Bisbee mine tour may remain open,” Arizona Daily
Star, August 14, 2013, accessed on September 12, 2022, Bisbee mine tour may remain open (tucson.com).

235
sense of impermanence and has since required extensive and more permanent repairs.68 Sally Holcomb
explains that after Phelps Dodge’s departure in 1975, there was “this haunting belief that they’re coming
back.” “The denial stage,” she stresses, “existed for a very, very long time.”69
Phelps Dodge and Freeport-McMoRan did both initiate numerous exploratory tests over the
years to gauge whether a return to mining would be viable. As Ignacio Ibarra explains, from the
perspective of mining companies, copper is not wasted if it is sitting underground. As long as the
companies continue to own their subterranean rights, it is “like sitting in the bank to them.” Fifty years
later, the copper will still hold value, and in that time the technology may have improved to the point
where they can extract it more efficiently. In other words, “All mines are never truly mined out.”70 What
dictated and continues to decide when mines close or open are the fluctuations in price and demand.
Both experienced a widespread slump in the 1970s, but all parties involved knew a subsequent rise
could emerge at any point. The biggest challenge in the ensuing decades was the upfront investment
required to restart operations at the Lavender Pit. To (again) reroute Highway 80 would cost close to a
billion dollars before extracting a single ounce of ore.71 The best chance for mining to reopen in Bisbee
arrived in 2007.
In that year the prices for copper and molybdenum neared all-time highs. Within just four years
copper prices rose from 70 cents to $3.50 per pound, while the price of molybdenum, used to produce
stainless steel, skyrocketed from $3.00 to $30 per pound. Freeport-McMoRan, which had recently
acquired Phelps-Dodge’s Arizona holdings, began scouring the state for new prospects while evaluating
the possibility of reopening old mines. Freeport set their sights on the Lavender Pit and experts began
68 Doug Graeme, zoom interview, March 3, 2022.
69 Sally Holcomb, “The Mine Closes, 1975” interview by Susan Wille.
70 Nacho Ibarra, “Bisbee Now,” interview by Susan Wille, A People’s History of Bisbee; Doug Graeme, zoom
interview, March 3, 2022.
71 Tour, Queen Mine.

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arriving in town for exploratory drilling. There was just one problem. In three decades, the community
had changed. The thought of a return of industry “has some Bisbee residents rattled.” Not only did
residents now fear rather than welcome a return of mining, but historic preservation codes presented a
new wrinkle by which Freeport would need to abide were they to restart mining operations. Nancy
Jacobsen, executive director of the Bisbee Chamber of Commerce, worried that an influx of heavy mining
trucks would harm the newly repaved roads in town.
Having reinvented itself as an artist community, tourist town, and retirement destination, those
in Bisbee—many of whom had arrived in the 1970s with no connection with the industrial past—saw no
room for the sounds, sights, and smells of active mining. Freeport’s efforts were not disingenuous. Other
communities in Arizona did see an influx of mining activity, leading to widespread housing shortages. The
company ramped up production at its existing mines, “hiring 1,800 new miners in Arizona and investing
hundreds of millions of dollars in new processing facilities and equipment.” In just four years, its Morenci
mine alone received 1,000 additional miners and more than $200 million invested in a new processing
plant.72
Richard Francaviglia discusses the irony behind resistance to the return of mining in communities
that once relied exclusively on it for their livelihood. Mining companies, for example, frequently
reassured local preservationists that any open pit mining would “stop short of consuming the actual
historic resources.” Preservation codes, for example, would prevent Bisbee from going the way of other
Arizona copper towns such as Morenci, where expanding pit operations have consumed the historic
72 Max Jarman, “High prices for copper, other metals prompt Freeport-McMoRan to consider reopening longclosed pits,” The Arizona Republic, September 23, 2007, in the Mines and Mining VF, AZSA. This growth in Arizona
occurred simultaneous to Freeport-McMoRan expanding globally as well. The Phoenix-based company owns a
mine in Peru with enough reserves to last until 2074, and a mine in Africa with roughly fifty years of reserves.
These properties offer far more than those in Arizona, many of which had already been mined for close to a
century. The existing infrastructure, though, was likely a draw for Freeport to reopen its properties closer to home.
See Ryan Randazzo, “Continued investment, new mines will keep Arizona copper industry strong,” The Arizona
Republic, November 14, 2010, in the Copper Mining VF, AZSA.

237
downtown completely. The preservationists, however, chafe at any industrial activity because they
“consider the overall site or setting of a mining community to be part of the historic ambience.”73
Renewed mining operations therefore pose a threat to the maintenance of the historic,
industrial ambiance of places such as Bisbee. These sites have now become frozen in time and resistant
to change. In Bisbee’s particular case, the historic character they promote to tourists is a turn-of-thecentury brand of rag-tag, boomtown mining from the city’s heyday. Several scholars have noted that
many towns never truly enjoyed a “golden age” that suddenly became lost with plant closings. The world
of capital investment, rather, was (and remains) one of ephemerality, with the “solidity of factories and
tenements and steeples [masking] a fundamental impermanence.”74 Commenting on how we perceive
capitalist societies, Mike Wallace suggest that behind this façade of solidity lies the “quicksilver reality of
mobility and relentless transformation.”75 What does this suggest about the role postindustrial tourism’s
image creation will play in the future?
Bisbee’s maintenance of its historic, industrial image will continue to be put to the test in future
years, as the decarbonization of the global economy has again increased demand for copper. The turn to
renewable energy sources—wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicles, and battery storage—has
brought with it the realization that metal mining must scale-up to meet unprecedented demand. The
Energy Transitions Commission posits that between 2022 and 2050, this transition to clean energy could
require upwards of “6.5 billion tonnes of end-use materials, 95% of which would be steel, copper and
73 Richard Francaviglia, Hard Places: Reading the Landscape of America’s Historic Mining Districts (Iowa City:
University of Iowa Press, 1991), 183.
74 Jefferson Cowie and Joseph Heathcott, eds., Beyond the Ruins: The Meanings of Deindustrialization (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2003), 5.
75 Mike Wallace, Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1996), 93.

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aluminum,” with smaller quantities of lithium, cobalt, graphite, and rare earths.76 As Ignacio Ibarra and
Doug Graeme have explained, there are still countless deposits of copper and other rare materials
resting beneath Bisbee, untapped and clearly in demand. But the historic district sitting aboveground has
actively restricted the opportunity to tap into such potential.
The turn to historic preservation, heritage, and tourism ushered in a sense of finality and
permanence in Bisbee’s history that had not before existed. In other words, it was the embrace of a
service economy, not the abandonment of mining operations, that rendered Bisbee static and
unchanging. Capitalism’s “quicksilver reality of mobility and relentless transformation,” as Wallace
describes it, seemed primed for a return to Bisbee in the early 2000s, and would otherwise make perfect
sense as the world transitions to metal-dependent clean energy. Phelps Dodge’s departure in 1975,
however, had forced Bisbee’s hand in finding a new way to survive. After three decades of slow growth,
the city was not just surviving, but thriving. This local-generated success provided a foundation on which
many locals felt confident enough to voice their opinion that a return to mining was unneeded and
unwanted. New mining operations would visually impede the turn-of-the-century theme the city had
cultivated in the late twentieth century. Bisbee has successfully struck a balance between industrial
preservation and tourist accessibility—the Queen Mine Tour an exemplar of this balance—bringing the
city much nationwide acclaim, especially when compared to other Western towns that have embraced
different regional models of tourism.
Frontier Lands: Aspen, Calico, Tombstone
Bisbee has managed to avoid many of the pitfalls other tourist towns in the American West face.
Affluence has fundamentally transformed many towns and cities in the West. Hal Rothman, in Devil’s
76 Energy Transitions Commission, “New Report: Scale-up of critical materials and resources required for energy
transition,” July 20, 2023, accessed March 25, 2024, Scale-up of critical materials and resources for energy
transition (energy-transitions.org).

239
Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth-Century American West, examines places where declining industries
become colonized by “neonatives” with outside capital, who eventually transplant local decision makers
in power. Multinational corporations, National Park Service officials, or just wealthy patrons, emerge
time and again as examples of neonatives, who construct and coopt skiing resorts, casinos, or wilderness
areas to replace former industrial sites. Rothman refers to these as “replacement economies”—"added
on, sometimes with embarrassment, after the demise or decline of another economy, usually by
someone from elsewhere who could redefine the place in national or at least in extralocal terms.”77 The
very identity of a place becomes its economic sustenance, and the investment in marketing this identity
fundamentally transforms the place. This, according to Rothman, is the devil’s bargain communities
make with tourism and outside investment. Slowly, outside investment markets the identity of a place to
the point where its own representation supplants and becomes the new reality. In other words, “you kill
the goose that laid the golden egg.”78 Perhaps because of its remote location, Bisbee has avoided an
influx of outside capital thus far, but the city was not without those who sought to transform it in similar
fashion to Aspen or Sausalito, where wealth and popularity have reshaped the places’ original industrial
character.
Even before the mines closed in 1975, developers began showing up in Bisbee to scout for
potential opportunities. Janet Holcomb recalled, “Aspen invaded us. They were buying up buildings like
crazy.” Many who were priced out of their former homes in Aspen due to gentrification “were coming to
Bisbee because they felt like Bisbee had the same future as Aspen.” Another local, Bob Watkins,
remembered people from Aspen urging him to buy up abandoned miners’ shacks before they
77 Hal Rothman, Devil’s Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth-Century American West (Lawrence: University of Kansas
Press, 1998), 15, 369. On page 15, Rothman notes that both Nevada and Hawaii show traits of being
“replacement” or “plantation economies, run by outside capital and local overseers at the expense of the local
public. The identity of such places became what they marketed.”
78 Hal Rothman, “Bleeding the West out of the West,” The Arizona Republic, July 11, 2005, in the Bisbee 4 – News
Clippings VF, AZSA.

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skyrocketed in value.79 One such developer was Steve Hutchinson who acquired several historic
structures, including the Copper Queen Hotel, the Muheim Building, and the Pythian Castle. Seeking to
cash in on the Old West motif much of downtown Bisbee exuded, Hutchinson bought a derelict saloon
and faithfully remodeled it after one in Destry Rides Again (1939).80 Many residents also recalled seeing
Ed Smart, a Colorado mining engineer and promoter, drive around town in the late 1970s. Smart claimed
to have “discovered Aspen twenty-five years ago,” and envisioned Bisbee as a “sort of Williamsburg of
the West” or a “new Aspen,” similar to Santa Fe or Sedona.81
For all its charm, however, Bisbee lacked much of what other places who achieved mainstream
success had. It does not have winter snow like Aspen, Telluride, or Park City necessary for ski resorts, and
despite its industrial legacy, many of the old mines had been consumed by the Sacramento and Lavender
Pits in the ensuing half century. Bisbee’s unique topography represents another reason it has avoided
gentrification. The city’s angular geography prevents a great deal of expansion, and many of the homes
available for purchase come with the chore of climbing. Bisbee has retained its charm, in large part, due
to its remoteness and the inaccessibility of its built environment.
That is not to say, however, that mine theming has remained off the beaten path. Its use has
helped usher in some of the nation’s foremost tourist attractions, including one of Disneyland’s five
original themed lands, Frontierland. In 1956, the park introduced the visiting public to the Rainbow
Caverns Mine Train, which shuttled guests around Disneyland’s new Living Desert environment. Four
years later, guests were invited to visit the mining town of Rainbow Ridge, where they embarked on The
Mine Train through Nature’s Wonderland. Although much of this attraction emphasized the natural
wonders that lay outside the mine camp—in the form of animal animatronics—mining has remained one
79 Janet Holcomb, “Old Bisbee Grows, 1978” interview by Susan Wille.
80 Lenz, “A Dying Copper Town.”
81 Bailey, Queen of the Copper Camps, 145.

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of the thematic hallmarks of Frontierland’s enduring legacy.82 In 1977, the attraction closed to make way
for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, which opened in 1979 and has remained one of Disneyland’s most
popular attractions to date. Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, which tells the story of a cursed mine camp,
amplifies and embellishes much of the sensorial journey experienced underground in Bisbee, Beckley,
and Hutchinson: steep descents into dark and abandoned tunnels, the piercing clank of the roving
vehicle, and of course, a run-in with exploding dynamite and falling rocks. During its quieter moments,
guests amble through a turn-of-the-century mining company office while in queue and whisk past the
remnants of Rainbow Ridge as they round the ride’s last corner. A feeling of dereliction and decay
pervades the imagery presented in Big Thunder Mountain, though the storyline takes a backseat to the
thrill.
This atmosphere of deterioration takes center stage in the Wild West recreation of another
theme park founder. In 1951, Walter Knott bought the town of Calico, located just off Interstate 15 near
Barstow. He restored it and donated the property to San Bernardino County as a park. Even before its
restoration, much of Calico’s built environment informed plans for Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park,
California. Knott even relocated some buildings from the ghost town for use in the park.83 Although
sitting in the middle of the Mojave Desert, Calico Ghost Town’s proximity to a major thoroughfare
connecting Los Angeles and Las Vegas enable the site to bring in roughly half a million guests a year. A
silver strike in 1881 put Calico on the map, and while a few historic buildings remain, the place has
largely been recreated and retrofitted with modern amenities and attractions for guests. There are few
82 Werner Weiss, “Rainbow Caverns Mine Train,” Yesterland, August 25, 2008, accessed March 26, 2024,
https://www.yesterland.com/rcminetrain.html; Werner Weiss, “The Mine Train through Nature’s Wonderland,”
Yesterland, March 29, 2020, accessed March 26, 2024, https://www.yesterland.com/minetrain.html. Frontierland
drew from mining motifs, but the Davy Crockett phenomenon, and the broader appeal of TV westerns in the
1950s, propelled its success as a themed land. The three-part Crockett saga on the weekly ABC-TV series
“Disneyland” generated sales of “more than 10 million coonskin caps.” See Dennis McLellan, “E-Ticket Memories,”
Los Angeles Times, July 6, 2000.
83 Michael H. Pazeian, For Those Who Served: Veterans’ Voices, Volume 1 (2019): 160-161.

242
who dispute that Calico “is more amusement park than authentic antique.”84 Restaurants, RV hookups,
gold-panning lessons, train rides, and a plethora of costumed characters, reenactments, and recurring
festivals situate the ghost town somewhere between heritage site, theme park, and desert oasis. The
ghost town’s presence in the middle of the Mojave Desert, however, affords it a certain legitimacy in
spite of itself, as anyone who has traversed its paths beneath the beating sun of summer can attest.
Calico Ghost Town thus offers an eclectic array of both acknowledged kitsch and very real dangers. Signs
warn guests that, although air-conditioning and refreshments are just around the corner, so too are
extremely hazardous abandoned mine shafts.
What Bisbee, Frontierland, Calico, and much of downtown Aspen share is their thematic return
to the turn of the century. This phenomenon is no different with Bisbee’s “rival” 23 miles to the north,
where gawdy retellings of the more violent aspects of its history proliferate. In Tombstone, a carnival
atmosphere abounds. Cowboys and saloon gals stand on street corners touting the next showtime of the
O.K. Corral reenactment while vendors along the pedestrian-only, dirt street sell T-shirts and trinkets.
One writer said of Tombstone, “It’s a tourist trap with a little history mixed in, just enough to keep those
myths about Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday alive.” They consider Bisbee “a pretty sophisticated place”
when compared to Tombstone, which “attracts motor homes and package tours.”85
Crude comparisons aside, the two places do present quite different approaches to tourism. Part
of this difference stems not just from the infusion, or lack thereof, of kitsch in the respective towns, but
of the chronological difference in their mining histories. Tombstone went bust early in the twentieth
century, whereas Bisbee lasted until the nationwide era of deindustrialization. By 1936, a booster article
84 Jenifer Warren, “Vying for a Dusty Distinction,” Los Angeles Times, June 20, 2002. Despite their differences, both
Bisbee and Tombstone freeze in time their boomtown status. Another way many mining communities have been
preserved or recreated is as ghost towns. From Knott’s Berry Farm’s Ghost Town and Calico to Death Valley’s
Ballarat and Bodie State Historic Park, ghost towns frozen in time have proved to be incredibly popular tourist
attractions. See Francaviglia, Hard Places, 174-75.
85 Baker, “Mine your own Bisbee.”

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for Bisbee noted that Tombstone was “once the greatest silver mining camp in the world, but [is] today
only an attraction to tourists.”86 Television westerns such as Tombstone Territory in the 1950s helped
popularize the town as a tourist destination with Tombstone (1993) starring Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer
solidifying it as the quintessential Wild West town in popular consciousness. Just off the main drag, the
Good Enough Mine Tour has offered a look into nineteenth-century mining since around 1980, but it has
not enjoyed the same level of success as the Queen Mine Tour.87 Perhaps this is because those visiting
Tombstone are more interested in shoot-em-ups and a drink at Big Nose Kate’s Saloon. A more likely
reason, however, is the fact that the Good Enough Mine is far less extensive than that of Bisbee, having
been excavated by hand from 1878 to 1898 during the town’s heyday.88
Visitors walk through the Good Enough Mine with a guide, who explains the hardships of
nineteenth-century mining. The first 150 feet of the mine was completely carried out on someone’s
back, for example, before miners set up a steam engine to help haul out ore. Miners worked the space
by candlelight. At one point during the tour, the guide extinguishes all interior lights, giving visitors a
sense of the darkness in which miners worked. Turning on a blacklight, then, reveals splotches of
candlewax drippings all over the mine face, providing visitors with a sense of intimacy and personal
efforts uncaptured by the more modernized methods used in Bisbee.89 Despite opportunities to pan for
gold aboveground, the Good Enough Mine Tour remains one of the least “kitschy” tourist offerings in
Tombstone. Ironically, mining operations have returned to Tombstone and go unnoticed by most who
86 “Bisbee Retains Early Romance.”
87 Francaviglia, Hard Places, 177-78.
88 For a brief look at Tombstone’s rise and fall, see Otis E. Young, Jr., Western Mining: An Informal Account of
Precious-Metals Prospecting, Placering, Lode Mining, and Milling on the American Frontier from Spanish Times to
1893 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), 275-79.
89 Tour of Good Enough Silver Mine taken by author in Tombstone, Arizona, March 29, 2022. Similar to the Strataca
Salt Mine, the Good Enough Silver Mine also offers more specialized packages, including the strenuous Toughnut
Mine Adventure Tour and the Girard System Extreme Tour. Like many of the other case studies, the Good Enough
Mine has been host to dozens of weddings as well.

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visit. In the 1990s, one of the two wells supplying drinking water was discovered to be polluted with
mercury, signaling very real dangers to the local populace hidden behind the town’s tawdry façade.90
Bisbee certainly feels more genuine than Tombstone despite its own changes and the lingering
industrial footprint in both places. Both places coexist in a region devoid of many other tourist sites and
therefore benefit from what each has to offer, even if appealing to different demographics. The tourist
markets of Tombstone and Bisbee, then, exist not as antithetical to one another, but in harmony.
Tombstone provides the ephemeral Wild West town in recreated form, freeing Bisbee to rely more on its
quirky architecture and eclectic community. Bisbee additionally benefits from the very visible physical
remnants of its mining legacy—noticeably, the Lavender Pit. While mining operations continue in
Tombstone today, they remain out of sight and unadvertised behind the recreated boomtown façade.
Both places thus appeal to the tourist public from different temporal and physical contexts, one enduring
and visually present with brick-built mansions and a gargantuan pit, the other ephemeral and long gone
with wood-built buildings and no sign of active mining. Nevertheless, the mining continues out of sight in
Tombstone, while in Bisbee, despite no active operations, one need not look far to see its presence still
felt.
90 Shelton, Going Back to Bisbee, 189.

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Chapter 7: The Colossi of Birmingham: Vulcan, Sloss Furnaces, and World’s Fair Boosterism
Within the Palace of Mines and Metallurgy on opening day at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis,
visitors gawked at a gargantuan pair of iron legs. Donning gladiator sandals, the legs towered over the
other exhibits, evoking the ruined colossi of the ancient world. The legs were those of Vulcan, Roman
god of fire and the forge. The statue’s incompleteness stemmed from the fact that Italian-born sculptor
Giuseppe Moretti had accepted the commission from Birmingham’s Commercial Club just five months
prior to the exposition’s debut on April 30, 1904. As tourists gazed upward in awe at the seeming ruins,
work at the foundry in Alabama continued at a feverish pace. In the ensuing weeks, the rest of Vulcan’s
27 cast iron pieces arrived in St. Louis by rail, and workers overseen by Moretti himself meticulously
bolted together and brought the Roman god to life.1
In full form, the 56-foot-tall, 60-ton sculpture
dwarfed everything else within the exhibit hall. It depicted the bearded god wearing only his sandals and
a blacksmith’s leather apron. His right arm extended, Vulcan examined a spear point that almost glanced
the hall’s ceiling. His left hand held a hammer that rested on an anvil at his side. On the anvil’s base read,
“Vulcan God of Fire & Metals—Cast At—Birmingham, Alabama.” The statue, quickly considered the
crown jewel of the Palace of Mines and Metallurgy, earned a grand prize from a jury in the Mineral
Department and was seen by approximately 19 million people over the fair’s seven-month run.2
By 1939, Vulcan would be standing on a pedestal atop Red Mountain in Birmingham. The Roman
god would have a commanding view of the Jones Valley below and an industrial colossus of a different
sort: Sloss Furnaces, whose bellies created the pig iron from which Vulcan was cast. Together, Vulcan and
a defunct Sloss Furnaces would marry the region’s industry with its burgeoning tourist economy in the
1 Katherine Estes Billmeier, Philip A. Morris, and J. Scott Howell, eds., Vulcan & Vulcan Park: Celebrating 100 Years
of Birmingham’s Colossal Icon (Birmingham: Vulcan Park Foundation, 2004), 22.
2 Matthew A. Kierstead, “Vulcan: Birmingham’s Industrial Colossus,” The Journal of the Society for Industrial
Archaeology 28, no. 1 (2002): 59; Raymond J. Rowell, Sr., Vulcan in Birmingham (Birmingham: Birmingham Parks
and Recreation Board, 1972), 34.

246
late twentieth century, but the two structures could not be more diametrically opposed in what they
signified. One represented a nascent city on the rise, its unique geological riches promising untold
wealth; the other told the story of this promise’s ultimate decline and end.
Sloss Furnaces’ preservation and redevelopment in the 1970s and 1980s captured a moment in
time when the rise of theme parks and the decline of industry provided fertile ground for new types of
tourist attractions. Planners intended for the vacant land surrounding Sloss Furnaces to serve as the
foundation for a permanent world’s fair. In the 1970s, three proposed plans detailed ways in which the
dormant furnaces could serve as the focal point of a theme park complex that married entertainment,
education, and regional boosterism. One of the plans, proposed by the Alabama State Fair Authority in
1974, framed Sloss Furnaces within the context of Birmingham’s (and by proxy, the American South’s)
historical progress as an industrial hub. This framework worked only by ignoring the fact that by 1974,
the city’s iron industry had severely diminished in size. Such proposals maintained Birmingham as a
mineral-rich, industrially productive, and economically vibrant place. Underlying these visions festered
the reality that the city’s industrial character was quickly vanishing.
Municipal leaders in Birmingham still bought into this boosterish vision of their city, or perhaps
looked to the burgeoning realm of tourism and entertainment to galvanize their region’s industrial
output. The economic terrain on which this vision relied, however, had shifted. Little money for
grandiose projects transforming Sloss Furnaces into a world’s fair complex existed, particularly from
potential corporate sponsors who had since moved production elsewhere. The teleological vision of a
city with boundless economic potential worked for Vulcan at the 1904 World’s Fair. Seventy years later,
proposals espousing such lavish visions elicited public disapproval and disgust. This chapter examines the
influence of Vulcan as a boosterish, allegorical representation of a young city at the turn of the century.
It then tracks how the vision underlying Vulcan carried over into the late twentieth century, where local
planners sought to capitalize on the tourist boon and reframe Birmingham as a cultural hub for the

247
American South. The language of these proposals appears strong and confident, but they were anything
but. The string of overly ambitious plans presented in the 1970s, this chapter contends, collectively
signified the cultural death knell of Birmingham’s industrial aspirations.
Vulcan
Upon completion, Vulcan became the largest cast-iron sculpture in the world, and the second
largest statue in the United States behind only the 151-foot-tall Statue of Liberty, completed in 1886.3
The sculpture represented a late-nineteenth-century return to monumental statuary embraced by
neoclassical sculptors and artists. This tradition found a welcome home within the Beaux Art aesthetics
of turn-of-the-century world’s fairs. The gigantic Statue of the Republic, for instance, figured prominently
at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. These international expositions, with their ornate but
temporary exhibit halls made of wood and staff (plaster and straw), brought together crowds from
around the world to commemorate historical events, display civic pride in one’s nation or state, and revel
in popular amusements.4 They also served a more pragmatic, economic function—the promotion and
“highlighting [of] agricultural and industrial products of participating states.”5
3
Jeff Book, “Return of a Giant,” Smithsonian (March 2004): 27, Box 1, Folder 6, Birmingham Museum of Art
Research Files on Giuseppe Moretti, Birmingham Public Library Archives, Birmingham, Alabama [hereafter BPLA].
4
Joseph A. Holmes, head of the exposition’s Mines and Metallurgy Department, hoped exhibits would display not
just products, but the “stages [of manufacturing] through which they pass.” When possible, production would be
“shown in actual operation.” The Palace of Mines and Metallurgy, for example, featured a functional oil well and a
working coal mine. Although Vulcan fell short of this aspiration as a static figure, his sheer scale made up for it. See
Joseph A. Holmes, “Mining and Metallurgy,” World’s Fair Bulletin (St. Louis: World’s Fair Publishing Co., 1904), 17;
Kierstead, “Vulcan,” 67.
5 Kierstead, “Vulcan,” 60.

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When James MacKnight proposed the idea of Vulcan to the Commercial Club as an exhibit
centerpiece, he hoped the iron sculpture’s monumental scale would attract “wide attention… to the
colossal mineral wealth of Alabama… and to symbolize Alabama’s supremacy in the production of iron.”6
Local businessmen and civic boosters sought to attract manufacturers to the emerging industrial hub in
the south. Exhibits at Vulcan’s feet featured raw materials and products from twenty Alabama counties.
The neoclassical tradition of monumental statuary and Birmingham’s desire to earn recognition on a
world stage as a nascent, southern industrial hub combined to bring the god to life in 1904.
Incorporated in 1871, the city of Birmingham quickly blossomed into an industrial hub with the
express purpose of manufacturing iron. The area’s unique geology played a crucial role. Birmingham,
sitting within the Jones Valley, was the only known place in the world in which the three raw materials
needed to make iron—coal, limestone, and iron ore—lay underground in abundance within a thirty-mile
radius. Red Mountain, to the immediate southeast of downtown Birmingham, itself offered all three
ingredients. By the 1880s, businessmen were erecting furnaces at breakneck speed, with nineteen built
in that decade alone.7 Birmingham quickly advanced from its rank as the nation’s twentieth largest raw
6 Philip A. Morris, Vulcan & His Times (Birmingham: Birmingham Historical Society, 1995), v.
7 Karen R. Utz, Sloss Furnaces, Images of America Series (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2009), 7-8.
Figure 75 – Photo of Vulcan standing within the Palace of Mines and Metallurgy at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. Two
men can be seen standing near the statue’s feet, where displays of raw materials found in abundance in the Birmingham
area promote the region’s untapped geological wealth, c. 1904. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

249
iron producer in 1870 to fourth largest. The accompanying explosion in population—from 3,086
residents in 1880 to 38,415 in 1900—earned Birmingham the nickname “the Magic City.”8
When members of the Commercial Club sought a way to craft an iron sculpture of Vulcan to
symbolize their city’s progress, prosperity, and mineral wealth, they intended to do so with the resources
on hand. Moretti produced a full-size plaster cast in an unfinished church in Passaic, New Jersey. The
sculptor shipped the plaster cast in pieces by railway to Birmingham, where crew members at
Birmingham Steel and Iron Company’s new foundry formed brick-and-loam molds to make the cast-iron
sculpture. The crew cast Vulcan exclusively from Sloss No. 2 soft pig iron, manufactured by the Sloss
Sheffield Steel and Iron Company using iron ore mined from the nearby Red Mountain range. The
foundrymen cast the statue in 15 pieces and, once shipped to St. Louis, bolted them together internally.9
The public eagerly tracked the sculpture’s progress. Newspapers reported on successes and delays while
local school groups paid visits to the foundry for updates. The entire process from clay model to 56-foot
sculpture took roughly four months and cost between $20,000 and $25,000.10
The Commercial Club raised many of these funds through public subscription, in varied and
creative ways which included concerts and benefit baseball games. On May 18, 1904, while St. Louis
fairgoers were already gawking at Vulcan’s lower half, the Commercial Club organized a public viewing of
the plaster cast, tinted to resemble the iron version, outside the foundry on the corner of 1st Avenue and
15th Street. The Club quickly removed the planned twenty-five-cent admission fee, deciding it would be
more lucrative to sell pot statuettes of Vulcan instead. The Commercial Club contracted with a
Connecticut firm to produce 2,000 twelve-inch statuettes of Vulcan in bronze after an attempt to cast
them in iron failed. The Club sold them for $2 each in both Birmingham and St. Louis, ordering more
8 Kierstead, “Vulcan,” 59.
9 Victoria G. Myers, Birmingham Landmarks: People and Places of the Magic City (Charleston: The History Press,
2009), 64; Book, “Return of a Giant,” 27.
10 Kierstead, “Vulcan,” 66.

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after initial sales were fruitful. On June 2, 1904, the Birmingham Age-Herald noted, “Many ladies are
purchasing two of them and placing them at either end of the mantels in their homes.”11
Vulcan, whether on display at the World’s Fair or sitting on home mantelpieces, quickly became
a part of the city’s identity and its special relationship to the region’s unique geology. Boosters had
distilled the “Magic City’s” metallurgical potential into a neoclassical cast-iron statue. Vulcan’s image
quickly proliferated through the St. Louis World’s Fair and Birmingham communities in multiple forms.
Nearly 19 million fairgoers viewed the colossal statue within the Palace of Mines and Metallurgy, with
thousands purchasing statuettes in both Missouri and Alabama. Winning the grand prize from the fair’s
Mineral Department, Moretti’s sculpture earned widespread acclaim. The City of Birmingham received
an offer from the City of San Francisco to purchase and set up Vulcan on a 200-foot pedestal in San
Francisco Bay as a West Coast complement to the Statue of Liberty in New York. Despite San Francisco’s
vision of its own Colossus of Rhodes greeting eastbound visitors, nothing came of this offer. Vulcan
instead remained at the fairgrounds until February 1905, when it was finally dismantled and shipped
back to Birmingham, where reception would decidedly cool off.
12
Over the next three decades, Vulcan became the subject of scorn and derision on multiple
fronts. Upon his return to Birmingham, city leaders voted to install the statue in Capitol Park, a
downtown square surrounded, at the time, by upper-class homes. The city received heavy pushback
from these residents, many of whom deemed the statue unbefitting their neighborhood. Vulcan’s
immense scale relative to the park’s small size, and his exposed bottom both figured prominently in their
critiques.13 The statue, meanwhile, lay disassembled for eighteen months while city leaders debated
what to do with it. The scattered pieces had been dumped alongside the Birmingham Mineral Railroad
11 Morris, Vulcan & His Times, 16; Rowell, Vulcan in Birmingham, 26-27.
12 Kierstead, “Vulcan,” 68; Rowell, Vulcan in Birmingham, 34.
13 Michael Huebner, “Vulcan gets artistic due,” The Birmingham News, October 3, 2002, Box 1, Folder 6,
Birmingham Museum of Art Research Files on Giuseppe Moretti, BPLA.

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tracks near Twentieth Street due to unpaid freight fees upon its return from the World’s Fair.14 Those in
charge of the Alabama State Fairgrounds finally offered Vulcan a spot near its racetrack, where crews
reassembled the statue in 1906. The statue’s move to the fairgrounds was meant to be temporary. He
stayed thirty years.
The reassembly process left much to be desired. Vulcan’s right arm needed to be recast, while
the left received damage when dropped by the reassembly crew. The workers bolted on his right forearm
upside-down, preventing proper placement of the spear tip. Instead, they laid the tool at his feet, where
it (perhaps unsurprisingly) disappeared shortly thereafter. The crew then placed the anvil behind him,
rather than to his side, preventing him from holding his hammer, which originally rested on the anvil
surface. Workers inserted a telephone pole to support his left wrist as a substitute, and installed wiring
to support his outstretched right arm.15
Once reassembled at the fairgrounds, Vulcan became something of a commercial canvas on
which advertisers peddled their products. The first to use it commercially was the Weldon Ice Cream
Company, which operated a stand nearby. The company crafted a huge ice cream cone out of plaster and
chicken wire, which they placed in the statue’s now-empty left hand. By 1914, fair authorities were
capitalizing on Vulcan’s commercial potential, and began selling the advertising space. In the ensuing
years, Vulcan held a Heinz 57 pickle jar, a Coca-Cola bottle, and had painted-on jeans to advertise locallymade Liberty overalls. At one point, he was painted flesh color and given black eyebrows and rouged
cheeks.16 Commentary at the time, and in subsequent scholarship, often described this thirty-year period
of Vulcan’s legacy as a pitiable, even humiliating stoop to crass commercialism.
14 Kierstead, “Vulcan,” 68; Book, “Return of a Giant,” 28.
15 Kierstead, “Vulcan,” 68-69.
16 Morris, Vulcan & His Times, 24; John H. Adams, “Vulcan Answers His Critics,” n.d., and Charles H. Mandy, “Vulcan
Makes Answer to Recent Criticism,” Birmingham News, n.d., John H. Adams Papers, Box 2, File 31, Hoole Special
Collections, Amelia Gayle Gorgas Library, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama [hereafter HSC].

252
The lack of foresight to shelter the statue’s pieces from the elements upon its return from St.
Louis, and its shoddy reassembly at the fairgrounds, both certainly deserve criticism. But Vulcan’s role as
a billboard demonstrated not so much a dismissal of the statue’s importance, but rather its adaptability
in shifting symbolic meaning to fit a new era of aesthetic tastes. The statue had already demonstrated it
could successfully represent the budding, metallurgical potential of an industrial city on the rise at the
World’s Fair. Its time at the fairgrounds showed it could also embody the often iconic, commercial
landscape of a blossoming consumer society in early-twentieth-century America.
Matthew A. Kierstead has noted that Vulcan, from its inception, represented something of a
“cultural irony” in that the statue was made on the cusp of a shift in artistic representation. The
neoclassical sculpture stood as an “allegory of modern metallurgy and mining [but was] created at a
point where such symbolic representations were about to experience revolutionary change through the
advent of modernism.”17 In the twentieth century’s early decades, artists of all media would turn to
literal images (in this case, of laborers and blast furnaces) rather than allegorical representations of these
subjects. Machine Age aesthetics had replaced the nineteenth-century sculptural tradition from which
Moretti crafted his work. Vulcan peddled wares at the Alabama State Fairgrounds at a time when
modernist artists such as Charles Sheeler created precisionist paintings and commercial photography for
audiences. Vulcan had indeed come home from the World’s Fair, but the cultural and aesthetic terrain on
which he had been fashioned had shifted. Nevertheless, local boosters felt his commercial bent was
undignified enough to successfully relocate him to a new park atop Red Mountain in the 1930s.
17 Kierstead, “Vulcan,” 62.

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Red Mountain had served as a topic of discussion since Vulcan first arrived back in Birmingham
in 1905. Many felt the site, sitting just to the southeast of downtown, was the ideal location for the
statue to be installed. Active mining of iron ore along the ridge, however, remained an issue. By the
1930s, mining operations had ceased, the mineral railroad no longer transported materials from the
ridge to the furnaces, and the federal highway running over the mountain was undergoing a four-lane
expansion. The shift from industrial extraction to urban development began as early as 1909 with the
establishment of several residential neighborhoods in the area. With active production no longer an
obstacle, the Tennessee Coal Iron and Railroad Company (TCI) deeded 4.45 acres of land to the city for
five dollars on December 4, 1935 for the creation of Vulcan Park.
Assisted by the Kiwanis Club, and receiving substantial financial backing from the New Deal-era
Works Progress Administration, Vulcan finally resurfaced in his original form atop Red Mountain in 1936.
Abandoned mine openings on the ridge’s north edge, as well as mine waste, proved to be a challenge
when redeveloping the site in the 1930s. Strip and underground mining had occurred there during the
early 1900s. Developers incorporated one mine opening, that of the former Lone Pine Mine No. 3, into
the park’s walkway system—a nod to the fact that Vulcan had been cast from pig iron manufactured with
Figures 76 and 77 – Image of Vulcan at the Alabama State Fairgrounds, where he presided over festivities from 1906 to 1936,
often as a commercial billboard. Note the telephone pole supporting his left wrist and upside-down installation of his right
forearm. In 1936, workers relocated the statue to its present location atop a pedestal on Red Mountain. A midcentury postcard
(right) highlights the veins of iron ore in Red Mountain. Author’s personal collection.

254
iron ore extracted from this ridge.18 In the summer of 1936, workers removed the paint and rouge from
Vulcan and transferred the pieces from the fairgrounds to Red Mountain. The statue, finished with
aluminum paint to increase visibility, was placed on a 123-foot pedestal comprised of sandstone blocks.
The entire structure stood 177 feet tall, with Vulcan looming 560 feet from spear point above the valley
below. In May 1939, the statue was dedicated and Vulcan Park opened to the public.19
By midcentury, Vulcan Park was attracting roughly 250,000 visitors per year. In 1946, the local
Jaycees Safety Committee turned Vulcan into a traffic safety beacon by wrapping his spear point in a
neon-lit cone. The spear, normally green, glowed red for twenty-four hours after a traffic fatality within
the city.20 As the years progressed, park features began to deteriorate and demand updates. In October
1964, the Vulcan Park Improvement Commission, Inc. was incorporated as city officials sought an answer
for how best to not just renovate the park, but update and expand it to accommodate the postwar
tourist boom and increased automobile traffic. The city allocated $1.1 million for renovation in 1969 and
the Birmingham firm of Elliott and Bradford, Architects finished a master plan for an updated park in the
same year. The futuristic plan called for a monorail to extend from Vulcan along the ridge of Red
Mountain and down the Red Mountain Expressway, ultimately linking together the park with other
Birmingham-area attractions such as the zoo and botanical gardens. The architects also proposed a hotel
and anvil-shaped restaurant perched atop a 700-car parking garage. Another study suggested
18 Morris, Vulcan & His Times, 25-26, 29-30; John H. Adams, “Vulcan’s Soliloquy—To be or not to be,” August 10,
1935,” John H. Adams Papers, Box 2, File 31, HSC; Bill Caton, Vulcan: Rekindling the Flame (Birmingham: Hand
Made Books, 1999), 64-65. The WPA paid $38,874 of the $44,062 required to complete the transfer and erection
of Vulcan atop a pedestal in its new park setting.
19 W. David Lewis, Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District: An Industrial Epic (Tuscaloosa: University
of Alabama Press, 2011), 420; Kierstead, “Vulcan,” 69; Caton, Vulcan, 17; “Iron Man Now Standing At Fair Grounds
Asks for Mountain Home,” Birmingham News, 1931, John H. Adams Papers, Box 2, File 31, HSC.
20 Morris, Vulcan & His Times, vi, 37; Rick Bragg, “In Birmingham, a Big Iron Man Gets No Respect,” New York
Times, March 22, 1997, Box 1, Folder 6, Birmingham Museum of Art Research Files on Giuseppe Moretti, BPLA.

255
transforming the nearby Valley View iron mine into “Vulcan’s Iron Wonderland,” with an underground
boat ride exploring the flooded mine workings.
Though nothing came of these ambitious and financially insensible plans to modernize Vulcan
Park—with a more modest renovation reopening to the public in November 1971—their vision casts
light on the status quo of tourism in the late 1960s and early 1970s.21 Birmingham by the 1970s had
become a vastly different city than that which Vulcan symbolized at the turn of the century. Civic
boosters sought ways to increase services such as tourism and hospitality to stave off the reality that
their city’s industry was rapidly diminishing. Concurrent with Vulcan Park’s modernization efforts from
1969 to 1971 was the shutting down of the city’s blast furnaces. Chief among these were Sloss
Furnaces—casters of the pig iron used to make Vulcan in 1904. The Sloss site, known locally as the City
Furnaces, had its own story to tell in relation to the city’s industrial legacy. Vulcan watched from atop
Red Mountain as blast furnaces across the valley shut down one by one. Sloss went dark in 1971, but a
new chapter in its story was just beginning.
Sloss Furnaces
Sloss Furnaces had been the longest continuously operating industrial site in Birmingham when
production ended in 1970. Colonel James Withers Sloss founded the Sloss Furnace Company in 1881,
just ten years after the city’s incorporation. The company began producing iron in 1882 with its first blast
furnace. It completed its second furnace that same year, but due to a coke shortage did not begin
production until 1884. Vertical elevators transported raw materials from supply bins below to platforms
atop the structures—measuring 65 and 75 feet high, respectively—where workers hand-filled them. Two
21 Kierstead, “Vulcan,” 70; Morris, Vulcan & His Times, 38-39. Vulcan underwent a four-year renovation in the early
twenty-first century, with a new 10-acre Vulcan Park and Museum reopening to the public in 2004. The site
welcomed over 100,000 visitors its first year. See James R. Bennett and Karen R. Utz, Iron & Steel: A Guide to
Birmingham Area Industrial Heritage Sites (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2010), 113; For a detailed
examination of the restoration process, see Billmeier, Morris, and Howell, eds., Vulcan & Vulcan Park, 42-63.

256
casting sheds stood to the side of each blast furnace. Under these metal-roofed structures, workers
tapped the furnaces. The heat was so intense that men working in the sheds needed to be spelled every
two to three minutes within the ten- to fifteen-minute tapping process. Workers helped guide the
molten iron as it poured from the furnace base into channels they had formed in the sand floors of the
casting sheds, where hundreds of sand molds received the substance. Once cooled, workers used
crowbars and sledgehammers to break off and retrieve the iron bars—or “pigs”—each weighing
between 100 and 115 pounds—to waiting rail cars.22 From the noxious gases emanating from the opentop furnaces to the extreme heat reached within the casting sheds, this work was arduous, dangerous,
and often deadly.
Most of the workers were black, and Sloss Furnaces, as with all industrial activity in Birmingham,
represented a major part of the drive to foster southern industrialization in the wake of the Civil War.
The company gradually grew its enterprise through vertical integration by absorbing mines and furnaces
along rail lines to expand its network. The acquisition of cheap, raw materials and heavy reliance on
black labor, including the convict leasing system used in the mining camps, enabled Sloss and companies
like it to maintain steady profits in the region.23 We will return to the topic of race and labor in the next
chapter when discussing the tour experience. Despite the dangerous conditions, segregation, and racial
hierarchy in place within the iron and steel industry, many black men still found it preferable to the
exploitative sharecropping system from which they sought to escape in the post-Civil War south.
22 George R. Adams, “Sloss Blast Furnaces,” National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form (Washington, DC:
U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, April 1978), 856, Metal Arts File, Sloss Research Library,
Birmingham, Alabama [hereafter SRL].
23 W. David Lewis, “Sloss Furnaces: The Heritage and the Future,” (speech, Sloss Furnaces National Historic
Landmark, March 5, 1992), 2-3, SRL.

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In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, iron was the cheapest and most available
material with which to build. Sloss and other Birmingham-area furnaces functioned as the middleman in
the manufacture process, smelting the iron out of iron ore with coke and limestone to produce cast iron,
an alloy that other companies could then remelt to produce a variety of molded products. Cast iron pipe
remained the dominant product created, but companies also used Sloss pig iron to make stoves, skillets,
air compressors, boiler grates, diesel engine components, high-pressure valves, ornamental urns, piston
rings, sludge pumps, sluice gates, textile machinery, and more.24 During World War II, Birmingham
became a hub for munitions production, with over sixty-percent of all grenades used by American troops
coming from the city.25 Birmingham emerged as the cast iron and foundry capital of the nation.
The city embraced its role as a hub for cast iron. Two reasons contributed to why the region did
not instead turn more heavily to steel production. Iron ore mined in the area had high phosphorous
content, a characteristic detrimental to steel production but a suitable advantage for foundry iron.
Secondly, artificial tariff barriers, known as the “Pittsburgh Plus” basing point pricing system, were
24 Lewis, Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District, 422.
25 Utz, Sloss Furnaces, 61.
Figures 78 and 79 – On the left, an aerial view of Sloss Furnaces. This photo was taken as part of the Historic American Engineering
Record’s (HAER) two-year study of the furnace site, c. mid-1970s. On the right, an image of one of Sloss’s two cast sheds on site,
with view of hundreds of “pig” molds formed into the slanted, sand floor. Molten iron can be seen running from the base of the
furnace, c. 1906. Images courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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imposed by U.S. Steel and adopted by private railway companies. This system, upheld by the Interstate
Commerce Commission in 1887 but later deemed illegal in the twentieth century, handicapped southern
manufacturers from competing with their northern counterparts.26 Birmingham’s embrace of the
foundry trade enabled the region to rely on its low-grade iron ore and avoid the freight-rate differentials
imposed on their products.
Sloss Furnaces finally modernized in the 1920s and early 1930s. The company dismantled and
rebuilt the No. 2 Furnace in early 1926, rebuilding Furnace No. 1 the following year. Daily capacity of iron
production increased from 250 tons per day to 400 to 450 tons. The company added an automated pigcasting machine in 1931 to replace the outdated and much more dangerous hand casting methods done
previously in the cast sheds, as well as two Ingersoll Rand turbo blowers in 1949 and 1951, which
replaced eight massive steam engines that had remained in use since the site’s early years.27 The United
States Pipe & Foundry Company (USP&F) purchased the company in 1942, supplying the latter with a
steady market for the parent firm’s needs. A decade later, USP&F merged with Sloss-Sheffield and moved
its headquarters to Birmingham.28
By midcentury, however, several changes, including civil rights gains that undercut exploitative
labor stands, signaled an impending decline of industry in Birmingham. The rising use of ductile iron and
plastic pipes as well as increased use of scrap iron diminished demand for pig iron. Foreign competition
came primarily from Japan and West Germany, where plants that had been destroyed during World War
II were rebuilt with funds from the Marshall Plan. The Clean Air Act of 1970 and growing public pressure
for stricter air pollution standards also hampered industrial output in Birmingham. At the same time,
global energy shortages had raised the price of metallurgical coke to the point where companies could
26 Lewis, “Sloss Furnaces,” speech, 4-6. For more on the “Pittsburgh Plus” system and its ramifications on
Birmingham industry, see Lewis, Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District, 381-82.
27 Utz, Sloss Furnaces, 8, 44, 49, 54.
28 Myers, Birmingham Landmarks, 48; Lewis, Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District, 437.

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sell it directly at greater profit than by using it for pig iron production.29 This last factor led to the Floridabased Jim Walters Company (JWC), which had purchased USP&F in 1969, to end production at Sloss in
1970 and close the site for good in 1971.
In May 1971, a coalition of local organizations submitted a proposal to Ben Harrison, president of
JWC’s USP&F subsidiary, urging the company to save the furnaces from demolition. The proposal,
recommending conversion of the site into an industrial museum, noted that Birmingham was the “world
capital of the cast iron pipe business” and that Sloss Furnaces were “deep seated in the hearts of the
people of this community and carry a great deal of historical significance.” The proposal stressed the
educational potential of such a facility, comparing it to Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.30 JWC
officials agreed to the plan, which including donation of the site to another institution. The gift enabled
the JWC and USP&F to avoid upgrading the existing plant. The company circumvented the cost of either
demolition or safety maintenance of an inoperative plant, which became the responsibility of the new
owner. The donation also rendered JWC eligible for certain tax deductions over time.31 Practical concerns
notwithstanding, the company’s donation of a downtown blast furnace complex that was almost as old
as the city itself provided good optics at a time when surrounding furnace sites were being demolished
en masse.
Birmingham itself was transforming, with economic diversification helping to stave off stagnation
and decline. By the end of the 1970s, only ten percent of jobs were iron- and steel-related. Air became
breathable and clear for the first time in the city’s history. Professionals, not blue-collar workers, now
comprised the workforce, with educational and medical institutions replacing industrial sites. Leading
the charge was the University of Alabama Birmingham (UAB), which had begun as an extension of the
29 Utz, Sloss Furnaces, 9; Lewis, Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District, 440, 448.
30 Lewis, Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District, 448-49.
31 Stefan M. Germer, “Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark, Birmingham, AL (USA): Adaptive Reuse of an
Industrial Site, Possibilities and limitations,” Master’s Thesis, Universitaet des Saarlandes, 1989, 16, SRL.

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main campus in Tuscaloosa in the 1930s but became an independent institution in 1969. Most
dramatically, Birmingham’s black citizens played an increasingly active role in politics, helping to elect the
city’s first black mayor, Richard Arrington, in 1979. Arrington would play a crucial role in the
transformation of Sloss from an active site of production to the city’s premiere tourist attraction during
his first years in office. Birmingham’s economic diversification meant that Sloss’s preservation was not a
financial necessity in the same way as Bisbee’s Queen Mine Tour, where the company town’s reliance on
a single industry left its residents with little else once Phelps Dodge moved on. Nevertheless, a great deal
of local pride had become embedded within the confines of the furnace site, and the overall destruction
of the iron and steel industry’s infrastructure throughout the region suggested that saving Sloss held a
great deal of cultural importance.
The Quest for a Permanent World’s Fair
After nine decades of active production, Sloss Furnaces was now ready to play a “postindustrial
function” as a “symbol of an identity toward which a greatly changed city was beginning to grope.” In the
wake of dramatic socioeconomic changes rippling throughout the Jones Valley, the “very stolidity” of the
nineteenth-century furnaces reinforced and rooted the legacy of the iron and steel industry for local
citizens. The dormant furnaces offered a “rusting hulk with a grandeur all its own,” primed for rebirth as
a postindustrial tourist attraction. Vulcan had captured the aspirations and spirit of a nascent
Birmingham at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, and now sat as a staple of the city’s tourist offerings
from his permanent mountain home. What cultural value the defunct furnaces might offer through their
redevelopment and interpretation remained undecided, but officials at the Alabama State Fair Authority
(ASFA) would be the first to make an attempt. JWC decided, without consulting the city government, that
the ASFA was the appropriate recipient for the furnace site. JWC held an official ceremony at the site on

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June 1, 1971, with the transfer becoming official on September 3 of that year.32 A postindustrial Sloss
was now in the works.
Throughout the 1970s, various proposals circulated on how best to redevelop and interpret Sloss
Furnaces. The main issue concerning the site’s transformation was funding. A lack of it resulted in
numerous starts and stops for the project, as well as calls for outright demolition of the site by middecade. The diverse proposals, however, shed light on how local developers viewed the site’s potential,
and how they best saw fit to preserve and celebrate the city’s industrial heritage. The earliest proposals
put forth by the ASFA, perhaps inspired by Vulcan’s legacy, sought to recreate the atmosphere and
gravitas of a world’s fair setting to attract a regional, if not national, audience. Corporate sponsorship
played a significant role in bringing state-of-the-art attractions to the public at midcentury world’s fairs.
The Walt Disney Company, which had debuted its Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California
in 1955, designed four corporate- and state-sponsored attractions for the 1964 World’s Fair in New York.
The company used the exposition to advance and perfect nascent technologies for eventual use in its
park. An audio-animatronic Abraham Lincoln, for example, recited several famous speeches in the
Illinois Pavilion’s “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln.” Meanwhile, General Electric sponsored
“Progressland,” which would come to be known as the Carousel of Progress, while “Ford’s Magic
Skyway” drove guests through the prehistoric age of dinosaurs and cavemen. Pepsi, finally, sponsored
“It’s a Small World,” a celebration of international unity that would go on to become a staple of all
32 Lewis, Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District, 448-50; Remarks of Mr. Fred Sington, Chairman,
Fair Authority, AR672, Box 55, Folder 6, Papers of Richard Arrington, Jr., BPLA; The Alabama State Fair Authority
was an autonomous, non-profit organization tasked with operation of the State Fair. The ASFA was created by a
1947 Act of Legislation with the obligation to “conduct, promote, support, operate, manage or own educational,
cultural, recreational facilities, exhibits and places of amusement and entertainment.” See Germer, “Sloss Furnaces
National Historic Landmark,” 16.

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Disney theme parks around the world.33 Disney opened Walt Disney World in Orlando shortly thereafter,
in 1971. The promotion of the company’s theme parks on its anthology television series, which aired at
different times on each of the big three television networks, brought the theme-park experience into the
homes of millions of Americans. This context, Birmingham’s own history with the 1904 St. Louis World’s
Fair, and concurrent discussions on updating Vulcan Park all greatly informed the ASFA’s proposal for
redevelopment.
The ASFA’s initial proposal in May 1971 sought to balance the educational potential of an
industrial museum with the prospect of economic revitalization through a promotional facility for local
businesses named the “Southern Products Mart.” One blast furnace and its accompanying structures
would be developed in a manner to “show the public the equipment and process used to convert iron
ores… into pig iron.” This portion would be “cleaned and painted to receive the public so that the risk of
ruining their attire would be virtually eliminated” with a “color scheme” used “in the painting of the
furnaces and equipment to show the flow of such things as water and gases.” Only half the site would
have been preserved (for the museum), with the western furnace and its auxiliary equipment being
demolished to make way for the mart space. Here, a high-rise building would be used for the “display
and merchandizing of products made in the Birmingham area.”34 Sloss was placed on the National
Register of Historic Places in 1972, but no funds were available for its development in conjunction with
this 1971 proposal.35
33 Vanessa R. Schwartz, Jet Age Aesthetic: The Glamour of Media in Motion (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2020), 57-97; Neal Gabler, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (New York: Vintage Books,
2006), 574-83;
34 Alabama State Fair Authority, “Proposal for Utilization of United States Pipe and Foundry Company’s City
Furnaces, as an Educational Facility Showing the Manufacture of Pig Iron and a Museum and Exhibit of Products
made in the Birmingham, Alabama area and the Southeast,” (May 1971), SRL, II—The Proposed Plan and III—
Estimated Cost of the Proposed Plan [unnumbered pages]. Dismantling and sale of half the site’s structures would
have supplied initial funding, with an estimated $750,000 needed to complete the project.
35 Lewis, Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District, 457.

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The organization provided a more extensive proposal in 1974, which married the influence of
theme parks throughout the country with the site’s industrial aesthetic character. The ASFA asked the
Birmingham Planning and Zoning Commission to prepare the “Sloss Furnace Tract—A preliminary study
of site development,” which provided two alternative suggestions for how to redevelop the site. The first
option called for demolition of one of the two furnaces and sale of its scrap metal for use in
redeveloping the other half into an educational exhibit or museum. The “remaining furnace and
associated equipment would be cleaned, preserved, and painted.” Piping again would be color-coded by
function and “walkways with guard rails” installed for guests throughout the site.36 Those crafting the
proposal, however, were not in favor of this minimum solution concept, but rather the much more
elaborate, expensive, and experiential nature of the second, theme-park alternative.
This second option would require the purchase of additional land for the expanded project. Each
exhibit in Alternate B would “involve the visitor in some way and appeal to more than two senses.” The
visitor would “experience rather than observe.” The proposal stressed that visitors would be “educated
as to the importance of the growth of industry and technology and Alabama’s role in that growth,” but
the learning process would “be fun and [would] often be accomplished without the visitor’s knowledge.”
The experience would provide visitors with an understanding of “how iron was made” but also “the
workings of a large industrial plant.”37 The 1974 proposal sought nothing short of a permanent world’s
fair complex for the Birmingham area.
The area surrounding the blast furnaces would be divided into five themed section. The “Mining
and Industry” area would feature an early Alabama mining town including cabins, a saloon, company
store, and other structures. The “Alabama Indians Prehistoric to 1837” section would educate visitors on
36 Alabama State Fair Authority and Birmingham Planning and Zoning Commission, “Sloss Furnace Tract—A
preliminary study of site development,” 1974, SRL, 5-6.
37 Ibid., 8.

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the history of the region’s indigenous inhabitants up to their removal. Exhibits would include a canoe
trip, a replica of Russell Cave in which Indians’ daily life was animated, and a sixteenth-century replica
Indian village staffed by descendants of four native confederations. The third area, “Medicine and
Science,” would include a “wax museum illustrating the history of medicine from the Egyptians to the
present,” as well as other tours through a modern hospital and a ride through a human body. The
“Transportation” area would feature an antique automobile ride, a flight museum in one of the two cast
sheds, and a power boat ride down a winding Alabama river. The final section, “History of Economic
Growth of the Southeast,” would feature a ride on the Confederate submarine Hunley with two attacks,
one by a federal shore patrol, the other by sharks and a giant squid. Riders would be “jolted by the
concussion” of the federal “man-o-war.”
Other southern industries would receive attention with additional attractions, including a log
ride linked to the southern timber industries and a haunted mansion ride set on a recreated Southern
plantation featuring “ghosts of famous and infamous Alabamians.” The proposal included a section on
interested groups and potential partners, realizing outside sponsorship—similar to that of world’s fairs
and theme parks at this time—relied on corporations to finance attractions. A monorail would link the
site to other area points of interest. The site’s entrance complex would include restaurants, shops,
hanging gardens underneath the First Avenue Viaduct, and an iron-wrought Crystal Palace.38
Though financially infeasible, to say the least, the 1974 proposal sought to provide visitors with a
comprehensive tourist site that presented a totalizing view of southern history and its alleged progress
through the late twentieth century. This boosterish vision remained rooted in the turn-of-the-century
38 Ibid., 14-27. One section of the proposal appendix titled “Theme Park” provided statistics for a comprehensive
list of all theme parks in operation throughout the country. The proposal demonstrates the developers’ belief that
Sloss Furnaces as a themed attraction could viably fit within the scope of competing theme parks such as Opryland
in Tennessee, Hershey Park in Pennsylvania, several World’s Fair-type pavilions from past expositions, and various
Disney and Six Flags parks throughout the United States.

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logic that brought Vulcan to life, exhibiting a shocking denial of current realities of deindustrialization.
The ASFA, in other words, looked to double down on Birmingham’s industrial character at the exact
moment when this was slipping away. Sloss Furnaces, developers hoped, would become a permanent
world’s fair with a southern twist. Each of the five themed areas presented a different temporal view of
the region’s history, but all surrounded the complex’s central attraction—the blast furnace itself.
Again suggesting one of the two furnaces and its auxiliary equipment be demolished and sold as
scrap metal, the ASFA’s 1974 proposal featured the remaining blast furnace as its prime attraction. The
proposal touted the Sloss Furnace Ride as an immersive, sensory-laden experience that would enable
visitors to journey as raw material through the pig-iron production process. The ASFA perhaps drew
inspiration from Chocolate World, recently opened in 1973, where visitors mirrored the journey from
cacao bean to chocolate through a simulated factory. The furnace ride would feature no less than four
separate forms of transportation in which visitors would be whisked through the complex. The tour
would begin with a ride in an ore cart underground, viewing the interiors of both a coal and an iron ore
mine. The trip would pass through the “existing ore tunnel and [end] at the base of the No. 1 skip hoist,
some thirty feet underground.” It would include both fact and fiction. Visitors would hear narration of a
folklore story featuring “Vulcan, the Iron Man of Birmingham, as the [trip’s] hero.”39
Once at the skip hoist base underground, the visitor would board “a car for a ride up the skip
incline to the top at the No. 1 furnace.” The platform atop the furnace would function as an observation
tower, affording visitors a “spectacular view of the Jones Valley” while queuing for the next segment.
Next the visitor would enter an elevator for a descent through the interior of the blast furnace itself. As
the visitor “glides past the constantly shifting layer of coke and ore, video tape recordings shown on
screens… [would] explain the workings of the furnace.” During the descent, visitors would hear the noise
39 Ibid., 11-12; Randal W. Oaks to Board of Directors, Alabama State Fair Authority, April 8, 1974, [letter included in
proposal appendix].

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of the hot air blast entering the furnace below, with the noise growing to a roar once reaching the
bottom of the furnace. Finally, upon exiting the base of the furnace, the visitor would board a ladle car
for a trip around the rest of the plant. The ladle car would whisk visitors “through the dust collector,
around and through the boilers, and into the blowing engine room” where hidden, electric motors will
turn the twenty-foot flywheels. The proposal stresses that sight and sound effects would bring the
furnace to life. Hidden loudspeakers would “recreate the rush of air through the air pipes, the pounding
of the giant blowing engine pistons and the whine of the electric turbines.” Almost as an afterthought,
the proposal suggests “animated workers [could] be seen tending the mammoth machinery.”40
40 Ibid., 12-13.
Figure 80 – Schematic from 1974 ASFA proposal detailing the various stages of the Sloss Furnace Ride. In the bottom right visitors
unload from the ore cart underground before loading into a second car to ascend the skip hoist incline. Atop the furnace, visitors then
load into an elevator to descend the interior of the blast furnace before offloading to its side. Image courtesy of Sloss Research Library.

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The plan sounded outlandish merely from a preservation standpoint, not to mention the
financial and liability implications. The fact that most local citizens agreed remained a moot point as
neither the money, nor any credible organizational infrastructure by which to raise it, ever surfaced. One
writer of an editorial, published in June of 1976 in the Birmingham News, did “not see the future of
some Coney Island type park there, or even a future for a multi-million-dollar restoration so that
sightseers could walk through [the complex] with the benefit of guides.” Rather, the writer suggested the
furnaces be “displayed as sculptures, beautifully landscaped, with the proper descriptions across the
[First Avenue] viaduct” next to the site.41 What this editorial suggested represented an extremely
conservative approach to the site’s redevelopment, with access remaining closed off and only viewable
from the nearby elevated highway.42 If transforming the site into a world’s fair complex was too
financially ambitious, the notion that visitors would enjoy a simulated ride as raw material through a
production process was not without merit or precedent. Without funding, however, no plans could move
forward. Worse yet, the furnace ruins had severely deteriorated and rusted in the years since they shut
down. By 1976, just two years after proposing the theme park, the ASFA was instead suggesting
demolition as the best course of action.
Shortly thereafter, the citizen-driven Sloss Furnace Association (SFA) formed during a public
meeting to protest the potential demolition. The grassroots organization did not waste any time entering
the fray. By June 1976, Randal Oaks, a local restaurant owner elected chairman, was appearing at City
Council meetings and lobbying on behalf of preservation of Sloss Furnaces as an industrial museum.43
41 Germer, “Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark,” 30.
42 Such a development would have resulted in Sloss Furnaces serving as a centerpiece akin to the Gas Works in
Seattle’s Gas Works Park. James H. White, III, made this comparison explicit in a letter to Mayor Arrington on July
9, 1980. White writes that converting Sloss into a simple park had the “advantage of relatively low capital and
operating costs” and recommended City officials “visit Seattle, perhaps in the company of news reporters, to see
what Seattle has done with its Gas Works and what lessons there are for Birmingham?” See James H. White, III to
Richard Arrington, July 9, 1980, AR 672, Box 55, Folder 12, Papers of Richard Arrington, Jr., BPLA.
43 Lewis, Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District, 459. An SFA survey of 36 neighborhoods showed
support by 29 to save the furnaces. By 1980, SFA membership had grown to over 200 individuals. See Jim H.

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Later that year, SFA urged the city to commission a study demonstrating the site’s historical significance
in an effort to delay demolition. The Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) arrived on the scene
to conduct a two-year, detailed survey of the property. The study was jointly funded by the city council
and the National Park Service.44 NPS had already begun inquiries about the site’s historic status earlier in
the decade, but the arrival of a team of architects to prepare a permanent architectural record lent
credence to the preservation efforts. Birmingham voters added to the momentum by approving a $3
million bond issue in May 1977 towards preserving the landmark. This was concrete funding that had
been absent and sorely needed earlier in the decade.
The referendum, though, did not reveal overwhelming public support for the project, with only
56% (9,800 citizens, against a 44% opposition of 7,700 votes) voting to appropriate the funds. The SFA’s
grassroots participation in neighborhood meetings was an integral reason why the project received the
financial boon.45 A staunch business class remained adamant that demolition and construction of a new
business park was the most financially sound plan. Others felt preservation was a waste of taxpayer
money. In a letter to Mayor Arrington, Leo F. Lukasik argued that “sightseers and visitors can see the real
thing in operation in Birmingham anytime they want to at T.C.I. [in Ensley]. Lukasik suggested the city
tear down the structures, sell them for scrap iron, and construct a municipal parking area instead.
Eventually, however, the ASFA not only cancelled plans for demolition, but agreed to transfer the
property to the city in September 1977 following the Bond Referendum vote earlier that year.46
Waters, Jr., “From the Podium,” Sloss Furnace Association Newsletter 1, no. 4 (April 1980): 1, AR 672, Box 55,
Folder 7, Papers of Richard Arrington, Jr., BPLA.
44 Ibid., 460.
45 Germer, “Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark,” 20.
46 Leo F. Lukasik to Richard Arrington, November 10, 1980, AR 672, Box 55, Folder 10, Papers of Richard Arrington,
Jr., BPLA; Lewis, Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District, 462.

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With little consensus on how to move forward, though, the project still lay in waiting for several
years as debate continued. Despite a growing consensus that conversion to an industrial museum was
the most suitable and financially feasible option, Mayor David Vann (in office 1975-1979) was expressly
in favor of a theme park despite there being only $3 million earmarked for the project. In 1978, Vann
hired David McMullin, a consultant with experience in Hollywood, to devise a plan for redevelopment.
The McMullin Plan was nothing short of a disaster, concluding in a $75 million price tag for a grandiose
vision of a themed complex which he likened to the Centre Pompidou in Paris, with its high-tech
architecture and surging popularity after opening in 1977.47 McMullin’s proposal made the ASFA’s
original plan seem conservative. In addition to the expected attractions, including redevelopment of the
furnaces with light and sound, a coal mine exhibit, and a museum of science and industry, McMullin
47 The Centre Pompidou was one of several international institutions with which McMullin hoped to partner to
lend legitimacy to his own. Nothing came of inquiries. See David McMullin to Richard Arrington, “The Sloss Project
and Certain Foreign Relationships,” February 18, 1980, AR 672, Box 55, Folder 7, Papers of Richard Arrington, Jr.,
BPLA.
Figure 81 – Aerial view looking west from atop Sloss Furnaces. The First Avenue Viaduct can be seen to the right. The photo,
one of the few from the HAER survey developed in color, reveals the dense vegetation that had taken hold within and around
the furnace site, rendering much of it dangerous and inaccessible, c. mid-1970s. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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incorporated other features that either held tenuous connections to Sloss or bordered on personal
fantasy.
He suggested, for instance, establishment of a major film archive and film industry headquarters
on-site, as well as acquisition of the Meerson Collection, the “greatest collection of classical dance films
in the world.” As “Mme. Meerson is a close friend of mine,” McMullin felt they could obtain the
collection, making Sloss the world capital of research on classical dance in the process.”48 Along with the
absurdity of McMullin’s “pie-in-the-sky” proposal, his actions had financial consequences. Not only did
funding for the feasibility study—which he contracted with an additional firm, Hardy Holzman Pfieffer
Associates, to produce—come out of the $3 million bond, McMullin also purchased an adjacent tract of
land from the Jim Walters Company for $863,000, leaving only $1.8 million left. The McMullin fiasco
signaled the end of dreams for a totalizing, world’s fair-type theme park centered around Sloss Furnaces.
Some citizens attending McMullin’s presentation “walked out in disgust before he finished speaking."
Those still supporting the project realized that, with only $1.8 million of the 1977 bond left, they needed
a dramatically scaled-back plan moving forward. At a city council meeting in July 1980, supporters gained
what seemed like a last-ditch effort to kickstart the project: a forty-five-day hiatus in which time they
would produce a greatly reduced study for Sloss’s conversion to a tourist attraction.49 This final plan
proved to be the winner.
McMullin had acknowledged in his initial proposal that “perhaps as much as half” of the $3
million bond would be “needed to make the place safe, durable and able to pass a City Inspection.”50 Jim
Waters, a local architect and SFA president, set about putting together a minimum-solution proposal
48 David McMullin, “Outline of a Plan for the Development of Sloss Furnace,” (1979), 6, 13-14, BPLA; see also,
Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, “Sloss Furnace, A Museum of Modern Times for the City of Birmingham,
Alabama: The Working Folio,” (June 1980), SRL.
49 Lewis, Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District, 466.
50 McMullin, “Outline of a Plan for the Development of Sloss Furnace,” 3.

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oriented on the first phase of McMullin’s plan. Waters only had the forty-five-day extension with which
to work, and he presented the scaled-down plan to the city in a series of meetings in October 1980. His
proposal remained within the financial boundaries imposed by the remaining funds left from the 1977
bond, costing only $1,718,710. Continued opposition was assuaged by the announcement from NPS that
Sloss Furnaces would become a National Historic Landmark in 1981.51
Bringing the Colossus to Life
Waters outlined a plan to “stabilize deterioration and preserve” the furnace complex “to the
fullest extent possible for the education and enjoyment of future generations.” The plan sought to
“provide an opportunity for children and adults alike to experience the scale and complexity of as much
of the operating equipment and machinery as possible,” allowing for “graphics [and] color coding of
piping” to demonstrate “how the various items worked together to produce iron.” Despite the plan’s
valuation of preservation, accessibility, and education above all else, Waters hoped the transformation
would “provide an experience which will also be stimulating to all the senses and entertaining as well.”52
In addition to restoring the furnaces and their equipment, the plan called for restoration of the (white)
employee bath house for use as a visitor center and administrative offices. The city council voted on
November 26, 1980 to approve the plan, and Mayor Arrington appointed Jim Waters architect of the
redevelopment process on December 30.53
Renovation began in earnest in 1981. As the site had sat dormant, different structures on-site
deteriorated or were vandalized to greater or lesser degrees than others, requiring Waters and his crew
51 Lewis, Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District, 467. Sloss became one of only eighty-seven sites
to have received the NHL designation at that time.
52 Jim Waters & Associates, “Sloss Furnace: Proposal for Initial Development,” (October 17, 1980), 12, 15-16, SRL.
An article titled “Industrial Metamorphosis” on the redevelopment of Gas Works Park several years prior was the
first document included in the appendix, revealing that Waters and his crew derived inspiration from the
successful transformation of the defunct Gas Works in Seattle into a public park and playground.
53 Lewis, Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District, 467; Richard Arrington, Jr. to Jim Waters,
December 30, 1980, AR 672, Box 55, Folder 7, Papers of Richard Arrington, Jr., BPLA.

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to tackle the restoration and preservation process piecemeal. The two cast sheds flanking each blast
furnace displayed some of the greatest signs of wear and were thus an early focal point. The decision to
hold future events in the east shed also made the stabilization and replacement where necessary of
supportive structures an essential task. Crews installed new corrugated metal roofing and siding for the
two cast sheds. The old bathhouse underwent significant restoration for use as a new orientation center
and administrative offices, while the laboratory building—victim to arson and severe deterioration—was
completely removed. Most other structures required no significant structural improvements, save for the
occasional window or ladder replacement.54 From time to time, crews needed to work around unstable
conditions. Rust Chimney Incorporated, for instance, used a crane and work cage to inspect many of the
six boiler stacks and four stove stacks on-site.55 Crews renovated building interiors one by one, with stock
tunnels and several basements needing dewatered as well.56
A crew had applied a primer coating of paint to most of the structures and removed scrap and
rubble from the site in 1978. Some of this paint needed removed when renovation began in 1981,
displaying corrosion underneath. Crews applied a new base coating of metal primer and a galvanized
repair paste in the early 1980s, with a finishing coat of “Rust-O-Leum” paint applied with a chosen color
coding for pipes and auxiliary structures. The color-coding system generated a good deal of criticism.57
Though viewing pipes painted turquoise to denote water use rendered the site more legible for guests,
some felt the didactic decision undermined the site’s historic authenticity. A major element of the
renovation process required extensive removal of asbestos. This was done with special clothing and
breathing apparatuses for crew members, and proved particularly hazardous in the blowing engine
54 Jim Waters to Charles Blick, February 19, 1982, AR 672, Box 55, Folder 15, Papers of Richard Arrington, Jr., BPLA;
Germer, “Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark,” 33.
55 Rust Chimney Incorporated Proposal, January 19, 1982, AR 672, Box 55, Folder 15, Papers of Richard Arrington,
Jr., BPLA.
56 Jim Waters to Sloss Furnace Board, March 22, 1982, AR 672, Box 55, Folder 15, Papers of Richard Arrington, Jr.,
BPLA.
57 Germer, “Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark,” 32-33.

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room. Crews also worked to render the site more accessible for visitors and improve public safety onsite, adding a number of stairs and doubling the amount of safety railings, painted bright yellow,
throughout the complex. New paved walkways, kept on ground level whenever possible, were added to
help facilitate exploration in a safe manner and crews rigged the site for illumination to help make Sloss a
part of Birmingham’s nighttime skyline.58
Despite the limited funding remaining from the 1977 bond, Waters and his crew were able to
manage a basic restoration and stabilization of the site in the early 1980s. Work continued throughout
the rest of the 80s and into the 90s, but the core structures were complete enough to ensure visitor
access and safety for tours and special events. Site restoration had briefly come to a halt on April 12,
1982, when the SFA stopped to celebrate the centennial of the original No. 1 furnace’s first blowing a
century earlier. Following the afternoon celebration, an evening fireworks performance accidentally
resulted in a wooden cooling tower catching fire. None of the other structures were damaged.
58 Ibid., 34; Tour of Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark taken by author in Birmingham, Alabama, May 5,
2022.
Figure 82 – Photo of Sloss Furnace National Historic Landmark. In the foreground sits the elevated stock trestle railway, with a large
chute seen mid-left, from which raw materials would be emptied into the stock tunnel below. Also visible is Furnace No. 2 and the
attached inclined skip hoist for transporting raw materials to the top, as well as the associated east cast shed. Photo courtesy of author.

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----------------------------------------------------------------------
The dream of a permanent world’s fair did indeed arrive in the American Southeast, though in
the swamps of Florida rather than Alabama. On October 1, 1982, EPCOT Center, an acronym for
Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, opened to the public in Walt Disney World just
outside Orlando. The theme park, celebrating technological innovation and international culture, relied
heavily on the international and corporate sponsorship those calling for such a complex in Birmingham
knew would be required.59 The park featured a Future World filled with “edutainment” attractions
similar in concept to that proposed in the ASFA’s 1974 plan. A second section, the World Showcase,
exhibited national pavilions surrounding a lagoon in similar fashion to the world’s fairs and expositions
prevalent throughout the previous century. Orlando, which had quickly emerged as one of, if not the,
tourist hubs of the American Southeast, seemed perfectly suited to capitalize on the increasing numbers
of travelers visiting theme parks in the late twentieth century. Local boosters in Birmingham, meanwhile,
failed to materialize their grand visions for a similar world’s fair complex. With so much of the iron
industry departing, potential corporate investment in an industrial-themed park had dried up.
Sloss Furnaces finally opened to the public in September 1983, with a four-day celebration
culminating on September 4, Labor Day. Randall G. Lawrence, the site’s first executive director, stated,
“Every city needs a symbol, a place that functions not only as a symbol of the city but also serves as a
center for urban life.”60 A far cry from a permanent world’s fair, Sloss nevertheless assumed the mantle
from Vulcan as not just the city’s premiere tourist attraction, but as the fount of Birmingham’s industrial
identity and legacy. If Vulcan represented the region’s unique geological potential for iron production,
the quiet yet imposing Sloss Furnaces now memorialized almost a century of workers’ labor and
59 Disney dropped the word “Center” from the name in 1994. Anthony Murphy, “Theme Park History: A short
history of Epcot,” Theme Park Insider, August 4, 2013, accessed August 22, 2023, Theme Park History: A short
history of Epcot (themeparkinsider.com).
60 Lewis, Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District, 468-71.

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hardship. The way in which tourists interacted with and experienced Sloss—from within, exploring its
guts and inner workings on foot—signaled an experiential and aesthetic departure from that of
Birmingham’s other iron colossus. It is to this journey, one multilayered and with numerous interpretive
waypoints, that we now turn.

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Chapter 8: Sublime Proximity: Sloss Furnaces and the Evolution of Industry’s Image
By 1976, the fate of Sloss Furnaces was in limbo. Much as the disassembled pieces of Vulcan had
sat roadside in 1905 while city officials debated where best to relocate him, the furnace complex laid
dormant while deliberations on its preservation ensued in the early 1970s. During this time, “derelicts
slept on the ground” amidst the ruins and “vandals removed brass and copper parts,” leaving a “public
eyesore” in the heart of the city.1 As the structures rusted, health and safety hazards became an
increasingly urgent talking point for those seeking redevelopment. Trespassers had removed much of the
site’s fencing, leaving parts accessible to young urban explorers and thrill seekers. In a letter to Len
Gedgoudis, David McMullin called for immediate repair of the perimeter fencing, noting Sloss had
become a “dangerous attraction for children who might enter the place and get hurt.”2 Throughout the
site, corroded pieces of metal would occasionally fall from high places, and 15 feet of rainwater had
collected under many of the iron floors, rusting them from below and creating unstable walking surfaces.
The Director of the Birmingham City Inspection Services conducted a survey of the site’s structural
conditions, with his team of engineers unanimously agreeing it posed severe health and safety hazards.
The ASFA announced plans for demolition in March 1976.3
A wave of protests from local citizens and burgeoning preservation organizations surged
following the announcement. To counter opposition, the ASFA announced that it would hold a public
inspection tour in May 1976 to demonstrate to those opposing demolition just how dilapidated and
1 W. David Lewis, Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District: An Industrial Epic (Tuscaloosa: University
of Alabama Press, 2011), 457.
2 David McMullin to Len Gedgoudis, February 13, 1980, AR 672, Box 55, Folder 9, Papers of Richard Arrington, Jr.,
Birmingham Public Library Archives, Birmingham, Alabama [hereafter BPLA].
3 Dale Short, “May sell part, restore one process: Fate of Sloss Furnaces linked to scrap metal,” Birmingham News,
December 1975; Lewis, Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District, 458; Stefan M. Germer, “Sloss
Furnaces National Historic Landmark, Birmingham, AL (USA): Adaptive Reuse of an Industrial Site, Possibilities and
limitations,” Master’s Thesis, Universitaet des Saarlandes, 1989, 18, Sloss Research Library, Birmingham, Alabama
[hereafter SRL].

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dangerous the site had become. The public tour, however, did not produce the intended effect. “Many of
the 100 people who braved mud, ants and threatening skies to make the tour,” according to a writer for
the Birmingham Post-Herald, “left with a resolve to fight to save the furnaces.” One visitor called the site
“beautiful,” likening the furnaces to “the pyramids.” ASFA officials had not accounted for the site’s allure
when viewed up close for the first time. Offering a tour of the site, even in (or perhaps aided by) its
decrepit state, made the crowd privy to the site’s potential effect on future visitors.
Local citizens, at this moment in 1976, realized the draw Sloss Furnaces could have on future
generations of tourists. Standing beneath towering stoves and furnaces, and amidst a labyrinth of
endless nozzles, valves, and pipes, proved to these locals that they had a bona fide tourist attraction in
the making. It was not the site’s educational capacity, nor nostalgia from those who worked there, but
the sheer scale and immediate visuality of the site that won over those visiting the complex for the first
time. A comparison to the pyramids evoked not educational or nostalgic merit, but something more
potent: the sublime. As the tour concluded, Randal Oaks, a local restaurant owner, grabbed the bullhorn
from the ASFA official leading the tour and denounced the plans for demolition, asking others to voice
their opposition with him. The ASFA’s plan had backfired. The tour galvanized the locals touring the site
to form the Sloss Furnace Association (SFA) that would go on to play an integral role in saving the site.
The tour would be the first of many to come. Building on the work of Chapter 7, this chapter
illuminates the evolution of industry’s image over time from Vulcan to Sloss Furnaces. Both tourist
attractions have become integral to the city’s urban identity. The latter, however, offers a much more
multilayered interpretation of the region’s industrial legacy, tapping into not just Birmingham’s mineral
richness, but also the city’s history of racial exploitation within its labor force and the iron industry’s
subsequent mechanization and deindustrialization. Where Vulcan presented a boosterish, allegorical
representation of a prosperous young city at the turn of the century, Sloss Furnaces captures the more

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sobering reality of the exploitative conditions underpinning this vision. Vulcan was crafted by and for the
city’s elites; Sloss Furnaces sheds light on the harsh conditions of the workers who did their bidding.
The appeal of Sloss’s manifestation of “boom” derives from its immense scale of production.
While the site was ultimately not redeveloped into a theme park (after multiple attempts), its unique
self-guided tour today entertains in a different way, enabling visitors to adventure into and among the
ruins of a towering, nineteenth-century blast furnace complex. This experience brings the site’s
technological history to the fore, while muting its social history. The former draws from an abundance of
preserved machinery; the latter must rely on scattered interpretive panels. The site’s transformation into
a walkable complex has generated a more active and participatory experience, providing visitors with an
immersive window into a previously forbidding site. The image of industry highlighted at Sloss Furnaces,
despite its more varied interpretive potential, remains dominated by newfound access to the
technological sublime from unprecedented proximity. As visitors weave in and out of the labyrinthine
complex, an image that is at once overwhelming in scale and intimately complex emerges. As much as
the image should reveal the socioeconomic history of the site’s workers, visitors remain drawn to the
machinery’s technological complexity and its mysterious, alluring, and, ultimately, obfuscating qualities.
In American Technological Sublime, David Nye distinguishes his titular concept from earlier
versions of the sublime by noting that “engineers, rather than architects, built the first man-made
objects that Americans regarded as sublime.”4
In the early twentieth century, Vulcan stood alongside a
host of civil engineering projects—railways, suspension bridges, skyscrapers, and dams—that Americans
regarded in awe. Nye points out that the sublime “taps into fundamental hopes and fears.” Not created
by economic or political forces, the sublime “is an essentially religious feeling, aroused by the
confrontation with impressive objects,” imbuing the landscape with “transcendent significance.”5 These
4 David Nye, American Technological Sublime (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994), xix.
5
Ibid., xiii.

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civil engineering marvels presented a certain image of industry that invoked American prowess, stolidity,
growth, and technological innovation. Vulcan, though sculpted, spoke to many of these same
characteristics as he towered over passersby in the Palace of Mines and Metallurgy in 1904.
The redevelopment of Sloss Furnaces as a tourist site, however, reconfigured this treatment of
the technological sublime. Both Vulcan and the myriad civil engineering projects that evoked awe and
admiration were intended to be viewed as such. Those operating Sloss Furnaces night and day never
intended to shut down production and reopen the site as a walkable tourist attraction. The furnace
complex thus presents a window into an industrial vernacular. This aesthetic offers sublime potential, but
potential tinged with failure. Visitors can certainly interpret the site as one of former industrial strength,
but there is no denying the machines’ silence. Regret, nostalgia, and perhaps dread for the region’s
economic future linger within the corridors. The technological sublime, according to Nye, reveled in
“moving machines,” such as the “hydraulic works of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston” that Daniel
Webster favorably likened to those of ancient Rome.6
Sloss’s machines might no longer be moving, but
this change has unlocked new ways to experience them. Birmingham’s opening of a previously
inaccessible site in 1983 gave tourists a newfound opportunity to experience the technological sublime
from a new vantage point: from within. Visitors were now able to explore and investigate the guts and
inner workings of a site previously admired only from afar. This proximity to the sublime defines the
tourist experience at Sloss Furnaces, adding layers of mystery, allure, and ultimately, excitement to the
endeavor. This final trait, however obscures many of the broader socioeconomic issues Sloss Furnaces
could illuminate, including the racial contours of its contentious labor history.
The tour experience immerses visitors within the turn-of-the-century industrial theme so
prevalent in postindustrial tourism. Highly reflective of the high-tech architecture becoming popular in
6
Ibid., xix.

280
the 1970s, Sloss’s vernacular aesthetic shares many of the qualities of previous case studies, if on a much
larger scale. Iron, steel, and brick materials run throughout the site. Deep reds, oranges, and browns
dominate its color palette. Finally, a panoply of geometric shapes from the myriad machines and their
intricate components rests in situ or scattered across the area. Sloss Furnaces invites tourists to
participate in forming a mental image of this industrial theme from its most intimate angles.
Immediately upon its debut as a tourist attraction in September 1983, former Sloss employees
served as tour guides. George J. Brown, a member of the SFA, had begun working at Sloss in the late
1920s. Brown not only provided tours early on, but rallied other former employees to the cause. 18 of
the 25 workers he called agreed to serve as volunteer tour guides. These fellow employees reminisced
about the working conditions, explaining both the iron-making process and Sloss’s role in Birmingham’s
broader industrial legacy. The men gave tours mostly to school groups, both elementary and high school
age. Over time, however, former employee volunteer numbers dwindled as men retired and passed
away. By the late 1980s, staff had already implemented a volunteer training program “to initiate a
Figure 83 – Photo of the ladle car right-of-way. The ladle car, which would have run along the spine of the complex transporting molten
iron poured from both furnaces to the automated pig-casting machine, can be seen at the end of the walkway. Photo courtesy of author.

281
transfer of knowledge and experience from former workers to younger guides.”7
Guided tours are still
offered today, but only on a limited basis. Even in the beginning, but especially today, the primary way in
which tourists engaged with Sloss Furnaces was the self-guided tour.
Upon arrival, visitors enter the orientation center where they receive a brochure with a
suggested route and information on each recommended stop. The bathhouse designated as the original
orientation center sits in the northeast corner of the site; meanwhile, the newer visitor center (built in
2014) now rests at the site’s southwest corner. The suggested self-guided tour route has thus shifted
somewhat over the years, but the basic stops have remained largely the same. Interpretive panels at
each site contextualize the production process and shed light on the worker experience, often
highlighting testimony from oral histories of former employees. Although illuminating, these panels are
sporadically placed and do not constitute a dominant element of the tour experience, meaning the
average self-guided visitor runs the risk of missing the information they convey.8
Visuality and Scale, Intimacy and Complexity
The ability to walk among the ruins of a nineteenth-century blast furnace complex only came
with major changes to the site. As discussed, developers took numerous safety precautions when
converting the site to a tourist attraction, but more obvious sensory changes have also created an
experience wholly different from that of the workers who toiled there for almost a century. There is no
manufactured heat, for one. Gazing upwards at the structures, one sees no smoke and soot emitting
from the myriad smokestacks, easily forgetting the carcinogenic fumes that would have polluted the air
above families living in the adjacent Sloss Quarters for over half a century. There is no noise save for the
7 Karen R. Utz, Sloss Furnaces, Images of America Series (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2009), 88; Germer, “Sloss
Furnaces National Historic Landmark,” 19, 46, 52.
8 Germer, “Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark,” 35, 44-45. Originally, the powerhouse and blowing engine
room were closed to the unaccompanied public, accessible only on guided tours for safety reasons. These two
buildings are now open and constitute a major part of the self-guided experience.

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occasional train passing by. Vegetation has reclaimed the site in numerous pockets where none would
have existed before. The site is also empty of not just workers and the sights and sounds of their work,
but piles of raw materials which often reached dizzying heights at active furnace complexes. A site as
busy and dangerous as a blast furnace complex was simply inaccessible to tourists during the heyday of
its operation, but people still managed to watch production from afar. The elevated First Street Viaduct
functioned as a sort of observation deck from which to watch workers tap the molten slag as it poured
into the north-facing pits of each cast shed. People were known earlier in the century to pull off their
cars when driving on the highway to watch the spectacle.9 The highway provided curious passersby with
an oblique perspective on industrial production from a (just) safe enough distance.
The opening of the site as a tourist attraction, however, created novel opportunities to
encounter and visualize the site from within. The ability to explore and get lost within the labyrinthine
9 The city’s decision to elevate the highway stemmed from the fact that in the 1920s, molten slag from the
furnaces would overflow onto the road causing traffic disruptions. Even after the highway was raised, the scene of
iron production could cause a stir. Dwight L. Young, director of the southern regional office of the National Trust
for Historic Preservation, recollected in the early 1980s that while driving through Birmingham in 1969, “I was
vaguely aware of… a big hulking mass of smokestacks and ovens and sheds… then suddenly a part of that mass
erupted in flame and sparks and red-tinted steam.” Young jammed on his brakes to watch the process, almost
causing an accident on the First Avenue Viaduct. See Lewis, Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District,
468; Self-guided tour brochure, 2022, Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark; Tour of Sloss Furnaces National
Historic Landmark taken by author in Birmingham, Alabama, May 5, 2022.
Figures 84 and 85 – Photos taken from the elevated First Avenue Viaduct, showing angles from which onlookers would have viewed Sloss
Furnaces while active production occurred. In the left photos, three slag pits can be seen to the right of the east cast shed. The right photo
shows the backside of the 1902 brick-built blowing engine building (center) and the 1922 power house (right). These brick structures and
the blowing engine building’s gabled roof, paired with the burnt-red colors of the hot blast stoves and gray pipework, present an image of
industry evocative of the artwork of Charles Sheeler. The image from afar allows the site’s various components, with their uniform colors
and geometric shapes, to work in harmony as an aesthetic whole, presenting a more intelligible image of industry than when viewed from
within and among the ruins. Images courtesy of author.

283
complex—sanctioned urban exploration—signaled a shift in how the average person was able to engage
with and envision their image of industry. Visitors historically could watch the pouring of slag runoff from
the highway. Once he began overlooking the city on Red Mountain, Vulcan too offered distant views to
and from his pedestal. The views engineered by Vulcan offered a clarifying effect, rendering downtown
Birmingham more legible. Today, the iconic look and positioning of Vulcan contributes to its role as a
geographic beacon. Like prominent structures such as the Empire State Building in midtown Manhattan
or the Washington Monument in D.C., people from various points within the city can look to Vulcan to
clarify and gauge where they are in relation to this landmark. Its illumination at night reinforces this role.
Views from the observation tower at Vulcan’s feet similarly clarify the surrounding landscape. There is no
better vantage point from which to gain a commanding view of the region. Visitors to the Palace of
Mines and Metallurgy or the Alabama State Fairgrounds would have experienced Vulcan in much closer
proximity, appreciating his size and scale as he towered above them. Since 1939, however, Vulcan has
offered distant views to and from his home on Red Mountain.
Where Vulcan clarifies, Sloss obscures. This latter effect, far from a negative trait, forms the
bedrock of what makes the postindustrial site so compelling a tourist attraction. In contrast to Vulcan’s
sweeping views, Sloss’s self-guided tour enables visitors to walk among and within the furnace complex
itself, engineering a completely different tourist experience. Rather than view Birmingham from afar,
visitors can now explore the industrial guts of a furnace complex. The self-guided tour encourages
exploration of the nooks, crannies, depths, and heights of the complex from an intimate vantage point.
This can be done to better understand how each part contributes to the whole of the site’s function, but
it can just as easily mystify and render obscure the process, taking an individual segment of machinery
out of context and marveling at its visual power on its own. Individual experiences vary, of course, but
the exploratory nature of the self-guided tours seems well attuned to the adventurous impulse driving
much visitation. In this manner, exploring Sloss can be entertaining, immersive, and enlightening.

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The site’s striking visuality overwhelms perception from these intimate vantage points
specifically along the lines of both intricacy and scale. Many sections of the site display a mass of
pipework that leaves the untrained eye oblivious to the industrial processes at work. Visual
comprehension of this “never-ending network of pipe that carried steam, water, and gas throughout the
plant” is often aided by the controversial color-coding system, but numerous sections throughout were
left untouched.10 The pipework in the blowing engine room perhaps best exemplifies just how intricate
this system can be, appearing as a tangled maze with no beginning or end. This sense of complexity
often melds with the sheer scale of many of the structures on site, notably the hot blast stoves, the two
furnaces, and the wide-bodied pipes that transport hot air and recycled gas in and out of the furnaces.
10 Utz, Sloss Furnaces, 55.
Figures 86 and 87 – Two views of the site’s array of hot blast stoves, seen from different angles. Turquoise-painted water pipes (on the left)
and yellow-painted handrails (on the right) visually cut through the dense pipework, but ultimately leave much of the system still
undecipherable to the untrained eye. Images courtesy of author.
Figures 88 and 89 – Interior views of the blowing engine room, built in 1902 and the oldest structure on site. On the left, is a side view of
one of the 1902 Allis-Chalmers blowing engines showing the flywheel, main-rod and top of cylinder, taken during the HAER survey, c. mid1970s. On the right, an image of the intricate and complex array of pipes, nozzles, and other industrial equipment used to generate
pressurized air for production throughout the complex. Left image courtesy of the Library of Congress; right image courtesy of author.

285
Often viewed from the ground looking upward, these pipes and their attached structures create
the impression of standing at the foot of a sleeping giant. The impression is sublime—at once intimate
and awe-inspiring, dazzling and overwhelming. Though discouraged from doing so, visitors often touch
the surrounding structures, abusing the lack of direct supervision. Fingerprints at various choke points
reveal the presence of guests unable to keep their hands off these historic edifices. Pathways encourage
exploration in and around the towering structures, allowing tourists to craft a mental map of the site in
unique ways but often leaving knowledge of how specific sections worked up to the imagination. One
must often simply admire the functional beauty of a section without deeper knowledge.
Shadows enhance the intricacy of the site, and enrich the various reds, oranges, and yellows that
comprise the site’s overall color palette. From many angles, one gets the impression of standing within a
painting by Charles Sheeler, such as his Ore into Iron (1953). Sheeler painted this work from a low
vantage point looking upward, based on photographs he took during a visit to a U.S. Steel plant in
Pittsburgh in 1952.11 The average guest at Sloss Furnaces, armed with a camera, plays the artist with
their own attempts to capture Sloss’s shifting appearances. Shadows, the time of day, and the weather
all provide a malleable canvas strikingly similar to that of the Grand Canyon and the ever-changing colors
of its many layers. Around each corner seems a new and undiscovered angle ready to be photographed.
11 “Ore Into Iron,” Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 1953, accessed December 14, 2022, Ore Into Iron – Works –
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (mfa.org).

286
The site’s visuality, experienced from the ground up in all its complexity and scale, is thus a
driving force in visitation. The 1970s and 80s offer a great deal of surrounding context beyond just the
work of artists such as Sheeler. An increase in visual exposure to new postindustrial styles of architecture
and depictions in film help to explain why interest in visiting such visually stunning machinery was in
high demand. Images of blast furnaces and other large industrial sites proliferated across television and
movie theater screens from midcentury onward. In 1938, U.S. Steel commissioned a thirty-seven-minute
film, Steel: Man’s Servant, directed by Roland Reed and narrated by Edwin Hill. The film was presented in
Technicolor and typically shown in tandem with longer feature films in movie theaters. The film traces
the path of iron ore extracted from the ground in northeastern Minnesota and its shipment through
Duluth’s docks by water and rail to the eastern U.S., where it was manufactured into steel in a blast
furnace complex similar in scale to Sloss. Another 11-minute film produced by the Academy Films of
Hollywood in 1951 tracks a similar process for the making of pig iron. Films such as these would have
Figures 90 and 91 – Two views taken from vantage points on the self-guided tour. At times, mammoth pipework transporting
steam, water, and gas throughout the complex. Shadows play off the structures, coloring the byzantine structures different
shades of red and orange. Pathways often leave the visitor free to approach massive structures such as the hot blast stoves and
their auxiliary pipework (right image), enabling one to experience their immense scale up-close. Images courtesy of author.

287
also been shown in schools in the latter half of the twentieth century, providing students with an
educational lesson on American industrial production.12
Blast furnace complexes such as Sloss also made an appearance in Hollywood, albeit in different
fashion. In 1977, while municipal crews cleaned up and removed scrap from the Sloss Furnace site with
funding from the Comprehensive Employment Training Act, work was temporarily halted so that film
producers could use the site as a futuristic location for The Ravagers (1979), starring Richard Harris and
Ernest Borgnine. Film crews sought to accentuate the furnaces’ rustiness to create the “illusion of
antiquity” for the film’s post-apocalyptic setting.13 More famously, James Cameron filmed the climatic
showdown of Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) at the massive Kaiser Steel Plant in Fontana, California.
Kaiser Steel was the largest steel plant built on the West Coast during World War II. The facility closed in
1983 and a Chinese steel company bought it, eventually dismantling portions and shipping them across
the Pacific after filming had concluded. Jim Morris, the film’s location manager, recollected that it “was
known when we were filming there, that the Chinese [workers] were coming.”14 Many of the film
locations for The Deer Hunter (1978) have also vanished. These include U.S. Steel’s Central Blast Furnace
in Cleveland, Ohio—demolished in 1984—whose reputation as the “Widowmaker” caused the studio to
insure its stars to the tune of $5 million before filming there.15 These recently defunct sites’ use as
filming locations informed popular perceptions of what industry had come to represent in an era of
12 “Steel: Man’s Servant” (1938), Periscope Film, YouTube video, 37:32 minutes, accessed December 14, 2022,
(664) STEEL: MAN'S SERVANT 1938 UNITED STATES STEEL DOCUMENTARY MD74702 - YouTube; “Iron—Product of
the Blast Furnace” (1951), Periscope Film, YouTube video, 11:11 minutes, accessed December 14, 2022, (664) 1951
CAST IRON / PIG IRON SMELTING DOCUMENTARY " IRON -- PRODUCT OF THE BLAST FURNACE " 18524 - YouTube.
13 Lewis, Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District, 463.
14 “Kaiser Steel Plant Site, California,” The Center for Land Use Interpretation, accessed December 14, 2022, Kaiser
Steel Plant Site | The Center for Land Use Interpretation (clui.org); “’Terminator 2: Judgment Day’ filming locations,
mapped,” Curbed Los Angeles, accessed December 14, 2022, ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’ filming locations,
mapped (curbed.com).
15 John Parker, Robert De Niro: Portrait of a Legend (London: John Blake Publishing, 2010), 128; “The Deer Hunter –
1978,” Movielocations.com, accessed December 20, 2022, The Deer Hunter | Film Locations (movielocations.com).

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deindustrialization—dystopian spaces. One historian likened Sloss to the “simultaneously archaic and
futuristic world of the film Brazil.”16 But for all their foreboding, sites such as Sloss could now be safely
explored for the first time.
The image of mechanical complexity showcased at Sloss permeated into other aspects of
popular culture besides film and television. The emergence of high-tech architecture (or structural
expressionism) in the 1970s accentuated the structure and function of a building in its design, which
used aluminum, steel, glass, and concrete as primary building materials. The Centre Pompidou in Paris,
with its colored pipes and escalators wrapping around the glass-walled building’s exterior, highlights this
architectural style. A primary reason why David McMullin sought a partnership with the cultural center
in the early 1980s was the perceived aesthetic connection the two sites shared.
Complex mechanical structures crowded kid’s toy chests as well. In 1984, Hasbro, Inc. created
the Transformers toy line from Japanese company Takara’s Diaclone and Micro Change toy lines. Long
considered one of the most successful toy franchises introduced in the United States, Transformers
generated numerous toy lines, an animated television series, and a blockbuster film franchise. The
opening scene of Michael Bay’s Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) takes place at a steel plant
in Shanghai, but was actually filmed in part at the SteelStacks in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, one of the
few remaining blast furnace tourist attractions in the country after Sloss.
Steampunk also became increasingly popular in the 1970s and 1980s, although tenets of the
science fiction subgenre date to much earlier in the century. Technological aesthetics of nineteenthcentury steam-powered machinery underline steampunk’s visual lexicon.17 Sloss’s distinctive nineteenth16 Alex Lichtenstein, “Black Labor and Technological Change at a National Historic Landmark: Sloss Furnaces,
Birmingham, Alabama,” Radical History Review 56 (1993): 120.
17 “What Is Steam Punk,” Steam Punk Original, accessed December 14, 2022, What Is Steampunk - Steam Punk
Explained (steam-punk.co.uk).

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century appearance fit perfectly within the parameters of the steampunk-inspired retelling of The Secret
Garden (2017), filmed on-site. Location shooting at Sloss and similar blast furnace complexes have
represented one of the myriad ways Sloss has become successful in its postindustrial guise.
Racial Exploitation and Technological Change
Sloss’s visuality and scale generate an unforgettable tourist experience, but they also pose a
challenge to the site’s interpretive potential without the help of a tour guide. The abundance of extant
machinery and its overwhelming physicality favors interpretation of the site’s technological history over
its social history. The site’s physicality, in other words, offers more to the tourist interested in learning
how the site’s many parts produced pig iron than those keen on learning about the site’s change over
time or the racial composition of its labor pool. The problem, however, is that these two factors played a
key role in how and why Sloss developed in its unique way. We will briefly look at two of the key stops on
the self-guided tour route—the Stock Tunnel and Furnace No. 2—to illuminate how emphasis on the
site’s technological functioning can obscure an accurate examination of its racially inflected history.
Near the start of the self-guided tour, signposts encourage guests to descend a flight of stairs
into the stock tunnel. Here, they enter a 747-foot-long concrete tunnel in which workers loaded raw
materials into skip hoists that would ascend an incline to the top of the furnaces. Freight cars moved
along a stock trestle railway, elevated above the tunnel, emptying their contents from chutes into stock
bins below. Workers then helped transfer the materials from these bins into counterbalanced skip hoist
bins which functioned like a funicular. The company added this inclined skip hoist system in 1927.18 This
process, while highly mechanized, required far fewer men to operate and was ultimately much safer
than the previous vertical hoist system which required manpower atop the open furnaces.
18 George R. Adams, “Sloss Blast Furnaces,” National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form (Washington, DC:
U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, April 1978), 857, Metal Arts File, SRL.

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The introduction of the stock tunnel and inclined skip hoist in the late 1920s revolutionized
production and significantly decreased the need for labor on-site. Workforce statistics reveal just how
stark a transition this mechanization created. 2,000 workers labored at Sloss in 1900, but by the time of
its closure in 1970, that number had dwindled to 250. Another source suggests in the early twentieth
century, Sloss employed 300-350 men to run the site full-time, meaning that during a 12-hour shift,
roughly 125 to 150 men were on-site at any given time. By the time Sloss closed, only 40-50 men were
needed on-site, working eight-hour shifts only five days a week. While machines replaced manpower,
production also ballooned from 100 tons to 400-450 tons of iron produced per day.
Sloss thus displays “several layers of nineteenth- and twentieth-century technology, artifacts of
both the hand-casting era and the advent of the mechanized process that eclipsed it.”19 While the
company upgraded and expanded much of the site between 1927 and 1931, certain components
remained. The 1902 blowing engine building, for example, exhibits two original 1902 Allis-Chalmers
19 Lichtenstein, “Black Labor and Technological Change, 123-24; Tour, Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark.
Figures 92 and 93 – Views of the underground Stock Tunnel and inclined skip hoist leading to Furnace No. 2. Men working in the stock
tunnel would facilitate the transfer of raw materials from the stock trestle railway above into the skip hoist bins, seen just under halfway up
the incline. One of these counterbalanced bins would transfer materials into the top of the furnace while the other was loaded at the
incline’s base. When underground, one can hear running water from the water table not far belowground—an essential part of the
production process but a complication for preservationists today. Photos courtesy of author.

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blowing engines.20 Interpretive panels throughout, which focus on the workers and their harsh labor
conditions, tend to focus on the earlier era in which more men worked prior to mechanization.
What results without a tour guide to hammer home this temporal disjunction is the risk of
visitors unwittingly compressing multiple eras of technology into one “historical” site. Even if interpretive
panels convey this change over time, it remains up to the tourist to seek out this information with
detailed and thorough inspection. Overwhelmed by the site’s visuality and scale, these panels are often
the last objects viewers wish to scrutinize. Sloss then signifies an inversion of what tourists experience in
the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine, a nineteenth-century drift mine in which mid-twentieth-century
technology has been inserted. In Beckley, developers compressed multiple layers of industrial technology
into a single site, resulting in an anachronistic but ultimately more entertaining experience. At Sloss,
historic structures erected between 1927 and 1931 remain in place and largely unchanged, but these
structures reflect decisively nineteenth-century technology. Although added only in the 1920s and 30s,
the upgrades were “in many respects indicative of the iron and steel technology of the 1890s.”21
If the modernization program undertaken in the late 1920s only reflected 1890s technology,
what accounted for the thirty-year delay? Why did Sloss executives wait three decades to upgrade their
furnace complex? Here the second conceptual theme of race comes to the fore. A central reason was
that southern manufacturers such as those at Sloss relied heavily on manual labor, most of which was
black. Some estimates suggest blacks outnumbered whites five to one in the region’s iron and steel
plants.22 Coming to Birmingham from surrounding rural areas, black workers sought improvement from
an exploitative sharecropping system that trapped them in a cyclical form of debt and poverty.
20 Adams, “Sloss Blast Furnaces,” NRHP Form, 848.
21 Ibid., 857.
22 Victoria G. Myers, Birmingham Landmarks: People and Places of the Magic City (Charleston: The History Press,
2009), 47.

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Sloss and similar plants also relied on Alabama’s convict leasing program by which companies
could lease prisoners—often incarcerated on tenuous charges at best—from the state. If blast furnaces
such as those at Sloss relied on cheap labor, the convict leasing system supplied free labor for the
company’s mines, where operations unfolded underground and highly controlled work camps were set
up in remote locations.23 One historian writes that “amid the smoke and fire” of Sloss Furnaces, “the
social ethos of antebellum plantations survived in a much different setting.”24 As long as there was
sufficient labor in place to cast pig iron by hand, Sloss did not consider modernization an economic
necessity. The decision, then, to finally modernize three decades after the fact must be contextualized by
the Great Migration and end of the convict leasing system in 1928. Modernization “coincided not only
with the increasing exodus of black workers from the South, but also with the abolition of convict leasing
in Alabama.”25 Modernization only became a solution when the company faced a newfound labor supply
crisis in the 1920s.
The ramifications for Sloss’s interpretive potential are thus manifold. Delaying modernization,
firstly, helps explain that despite viewing structures built in the 1920s and 30s, Sloss remains essentially a
nineteenth-century site in more ways than one. It began operation in 1882, but its twentieth-century
upgrades only updated production and technology to levels that plants in the north had reached by
1890. The narrative linking labor and race is crucial to understanding why Sloss modernized and
mechanized when it did, but there remains a disjuncture between the average self-guided tour
experience and this subject. If interpretive panels speak to the modernization program and how labor
23 Early in the twentieth century, iron and steel companies developed coal mines along Alabama’s Warrior River.
The Pratt Consolidated Coal Company opened a convict mine at its Banner mine location in 1902. In 1911, an
explosion there killed 128 men, most of whom were black convicts. See Utz, Sloss Furnaces, 24.
24 Lewis, Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District, 423.
25 Lichtenstein, “Black Labor and Technological Change,” 124. The company’s decision to upgrade its furnace
complex only once its stream of exploitable labor dried up complicates the notion that southern industry struggled
to compete nationally only because of U.S. Steel’s “Pittsburgh Plus” basing point pricing system. This system of
uneven tariffs certainly hampered southern production, but manufacturers such as Sloss willingly hindered
economic growth and competition by continuing reliance on a racially driven labor system of exploitation.

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changed before and after, much less is said on the fact that the racial identity of Sloss’s workers played a
central role in the transition. Modernization was not a technological decision, but a social one.
Interpretation within the Furnace No. 2 cast shed reveals the difficulty in highlighting work
conditions from different eras. The visitor experience in this section tends to value the pre-mechanized
era of labor over that of the latter, mechanized era, but the site preserves elements from both. Part of
this preference for pre-mechanization derives from the overwhelming scale of the cast shed, originally
designed for the archaic method of sand-casting pigs by hand that continued until 1931. The premechanized process, ultimately, offers a more compelling portrait of the harsh and dangerous conditions
workers faced in the casting sheds.
Visitors are encouraged to explore the base of the furnace and its endless array of pipes and
valves. The bustle pipe pumped in 1,200-degree air to meet the burning coke within the interior base of
the furnace, where the temperature reached 3,800 degrees Fahrenheit. Turquoise-painted pipes denote
the water jacket surrounding the furnace to pump in water. The cinder notch on the side would have
been tapped every two hours to remove molten slag. Crew members originally let this byproduct flow
out in (slag) pits next to the cast shed. Molten iron was tapped every four hours from a notch in the
front, originally poured into the slanted sand floor. As with the workers stationed on top of the open
furnaces to hand-load raw materials prior to mechanization, those who worked in the cast sheds
manually pouring pig iron faced some of the most dangerous and physically demanding conditions onsite. Before introduction of the automated pig-casting machine in 1931, men worked just inches away
from streams of molten iron, often resulting in maiming and burning.26
26 Utz, Sloss Furnaces, 57. On average, only one out of every ten men was physically able to execute the job of
breaking off the bars with a sledgehammer and picking them up by hand once cooled for transport into rail cars.
Each bar weighed anywhere from 100 to 115 pounds. Even then, most workers would only last three to five years
in this position because of how much the task broke down their bodies, eventually finding a less demanding role.

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Much of this section nevertheless highlights changes in production during the mechanized era.
The furnace itself, which sits on 20 feet of reinforced concrete and reaches 144 feet above ground level,
is much larger than the original furnace with which workers would have sand-cast pigs while wearing
wooden blocks on their shoes as they maneuvered around the molten iron.27 The result is an inaccurate
assumption that laborers would have hand-cast “pigs” from a furnace of that size. In 1975, redevelopers
sold the automated pig-casting machine that replaced hand-casting in 1931. A ladle car that would
transport the molten iron from troughs in the floor to this automated machine, however, still rests in
place just below the shed’s raised floor. This car shuttled molten iron to the pig-casting machine from
both furnaces, running along the rail-lined right-of-way that visitors first traverse when beginning the
tour. The ladle car and automated pig-casting machine again made the work environment much safer
and production more efficient, but ultimately required far fewer men.28 An interpretive sign within the
cast shed details both the sand-casting and machine-casting methods, but it is again up to the visitor to
piece together at what point this change in production happened, and more importantly, why.
27 Adams, “Sloss Blast Furnaces,” NRHP Form, 856; Tour, Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark.
28 Adams, “Sloss Blast Furnaces,” NRHP Form, 857; Lichtenstein, “Black Labor and Technological Change,” 123. The
pig-casting machine was introduced on-site in 1931, thirty-five years after its invention. Shockingly, the inventor
was Edward A. Uehling, who developed the machine in the 1890s while serving as furnace superintendent at Sloss.
His superiors declined its use, and Uehling instead sold it to Andrew Carnegie for use at his Edgar Thompson plant.
Figure 94 – Photo of the base of Furnace No. 2 in the east cast shed. The large bustle pipe wrapping around the furnace would transport
the hot air from the hot blast stoves into the base, where temperatures reached 3,800 degrees. Molten iron would be poured in the front
every four hours, while slag was tapped on the right side from the cinder notch every two. Developers built a wooden stage (not pictured)
for events to be held within this cast shed. The furnace base as seen here frames performances as backdrop. Image courtesy of author.

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These two stops highlight two interrelated, conceptual themes—time compression and the racial
composition of labor—that cut to the heart of Sloss’s complexity as a postindustrial tourist attraction.
The image of industry at Sloss becomes much more multilayered than with Vulcan’s turn-of-the-century
boosterism. But the experiential changes created by rendering Sloss safe to explore undercut much of
this interpretive potential. Guests entering the byzantine complex face a visual puzzle begging to be
deciphered. Where does this pipe go? How does it connect to the larger structure? What gases do these
valves control? Sloss is meant to be explored, marveled at, and investigated. Coverage of the site’s
technological history benefits from the site’s overall preservation, but the site’s social history also suffers
from the demolition of the adjacent, company-built Sloss Quarters in the late 1950s. The Sloss Quarters
consisted of 48 houses designed for black workers. Living conditions were bleak, with the homes
consisting of two rooms set on foundation posts and lacking indoor plumbing in the early years.29
Those redeveloping Sloss as a tourist site and community hub have cultivated a growth of
knowledge about labor conditions and life in the Quarters from the beginning. A robust oral history
collection documents what work was like at the furnaces and what life was like at Sloss Quarters. Talk of
constructing a recreated village on-site in the likeness of Sloss Quarters surfaced in a Historic Interpretive
Committee Report in 1998. This project stemmed from a desire to more fully highlight the social history
of Sloss and its workers, with the recreated village serving as an interpretive counterpart to the
technological history showcased with the furnace complex.30 Discussions arose around the same time
29 James R. Bennett and Karen R. Utz, Iron & Steel: A Guide to Birmingham Area Industrial Heritage Sites
(Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2010), 88-91. The company dismantled the Sloss Quarters in the late
1950s when maintenance and repairs became too costly and families moved further away from the Sloss’s shadow
to neighborhoods with safer air. Sloss Quarters was not a company town in the strictest sense, although the
neighborhood did have a doctor’s office and company store which served as both pay office and shopping center.
The Quarters enabled Sloss executives to keep its lowest-paid employees close by in case of an emergency, and
served to ensure a steady supply of labor in an industry where job turnover and absenteeism rates were high.
30 Historic Interpretive Committee Report, April 15, 1998, 2-6, Metal Arts File, SRL.

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developers in Beckley were reconstructing their aboveground Coal Camp. Nothing, however, came of
these plans.
Interpretive panels detail much of the inequality and segregation black workers faced on-site.
Workers used separate bathhouses and attended separate company picnics. Jobs were structurally
segregated with black men restricted to lower-earning positions and little room for advancement. At the
top of the hierarchy was an all-white group of managers, technicians, foremen, engineers, and other
highly paid positions. Beneath them was a racially mixed group of white and black workers in both skilled
and semi-skilled positions, but a difference in job titles enabled the former to earn more as a “stove
tender” or “machinist” while the latter were restricted to titles such as “stove tender helper” and
“machinist helper.”31
The site’s interpretive purchase deserves top marks for focusing on the workers’ stories of
hardship and perseverance through adversity, but it is most effective in capturing the adversity
presented by the furnaces themselves and their demanding conditions. Interpretive panels and signs
also touch on the inequality and segregation underlying this work, but without more physical evidence
to highlight these issues, their purchase falls short of that of the technological narrative. It is ultimately
up to the tourist to investigate the site’s social history, or question why the site developed in delayed
fashion based on the racial composition of its workforce. There remains an opportunity for the Sloss
Furnace National Historic Landmark to play a more leading role in the history of race relations and labor
in the industrial south, particularly given Birmingham’s national significance in the civil rights movement,
but drawing attention to these issues at Sloss will continue to be a tall task if done in the shadow of the
technological sublime.
31 Bennett and Utz, Iron & Steel, 87-88.

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Sloss Furnaces nevertheless opened Birmingham’s industrial history to interpretation on multiple
levels. Per Raymond Williams’s theoretical framework of residual and emergent forms of culture, we can
see many competing interpretations at play at any given time. With so much to explore, interpretation of
the site’s technological functioning serves as the dominant interpretation on-site. Some scholars have
referred to this romanticization as “technostalgia” for old machines and their function.32 Without prior
knowledge of iron production, visitors view the countless working parts of Sloss as a puzzle to decipher.
Many interpretive panels help describe how specific sections fit within the larger framework of
production. An alternative reading might link the site to a century of American power and greatness,
similar to the boosterish interpretation of Vulcan as a symbol of Birmingham’s mineral wealth. This
alternative interpretation also stresses the adversity and harsh labor conditions men faced while working
on-site, but approaches this issue from a triumphant viewpoint, celebrating the American “spirit” and
“work ethic” that made industrial production at so dangerous a site possible. An oppositional reading of
the site, finally, might focus on the racial exploitation that took place at Sloss, as well as the delayed
technological development that unfolded due to the racial makeup of its workforce. As we move further
and further away from Sloss as an active site of production, it is likely that the primacy of the built
environment will continue to dominate interpretations. Sloss nevertheless offers visitors a great deal
more interpretive potential to understanding Birmingham’s industrial past than Vulcan ever did.
32 See Richard Francaviglia, Hard Places: Reading the Landscape of America’s Historic Mining Districts (Iowa City:
University of Iowa Press, 1997), 167; Carolyn Kitch, Pennsylvania in Public Memory: Reclaiming the Industrial Past
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 12, 155; Mike Wallace, “Progress Talk: Museums of
Science, Technology, and Industry,” in Mickey Mouse History and other Essays on American Memory (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1996), 75-86. Wallace situates the advent of technology museums in the 1920s with the
absorption of the engineering, professional-managerial class within the corporate order. These engineers, Wallace
argues, tended to lionize machinery. The tight, narrow focus on machines as agents of change ignored the social
and political implications of technology, thereby reinforcing the dominant, capitalist order.

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In Sparse Company
Throughout the 1980s, Sloss Furnace National Historic Landmark grew both as a tourist
attraction and a cultural hub for public and private events. The site averaged 75,000 visitors per year by
1991, with another source listing 125,000 guests per year from 2000 onward. A visitor survey from the
late 1980s drawing from data generated from 349 forms suggested that “interest in technology” and
“curiosity” were the primary factors driving attendance. While these attendance numbers for visits to
the site proper are enough to consider the site successful, its event attendance in the early years of
operation far exceeded them. In the first five years, Sloss attracted a total of 292,800 guests, of which
220,000 were from special events and 72,100 were “museum” tourists.33 Events have proved to be an
essential element of Sloss’s civic function as a postindustrial tourist site, with the east cast shed’s stage
and 2,000-person capacity playing a major role.
Numerous rock concerts and the Alabama Symphony Orchestra have played there, with the
occasional whistle from passing trains adding a unique twist to the entertainment. During one concert,
Marilyn Manson “climbed on the slag machine and almost fell off.” Music festivals and food festivals such
as the Stokin’ the Fire BBQ Festival, first held in 2004, have also played a prominent part. Photography
sessions and weddings, theater groups and dance troupes all come to Sloss to hold events. The site’s
ambiance and history of gruesome injuries and deaths has contributed to Sloss’s distinction as a haunted
place within many circles. At one point, Sloss hosted an annual “Ghost Tour” based on Alabama folklorist
Kathryn Tucker Windham’s The Ghost in Sloss Furnaces (1987). Sloss’s Halloween activities in 1986
attracted between 47,000 to 50,000 visitors in one evening, and Sloss Fright Furnace brought more than
33 Paul Glader, “Steeling Away: Bored with Colonial Williamsburg? Visit a historic blast furnace,” Wall Street
Journal, August 16, 2004; Lewis, Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District, 472; Germer, “Sloss
Furnaces National Historic Landmark,” 56, 69.

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one million horror fans to the venue from 1997 to 2019. In 2022, Birmingham hosted the World Games,
with Sloss serving as a venue for DanceSport, Gymnastics, Handball, and Sports Climbing.34
The Sloss Metal Arts program, began in 1985 and housed in the site’s west cast shed, remains
the most vital programming on-site. Through its Metal Arts, Sloss offers workshops, exhibitions, and
hosts conferences related to all aspects of metal working, but most specifically on the use of cast iron as
a sculpture medium. Studios within the west cast shed provide professional artists access to foundry
facilities, while “regular sculpture workshops in casting, welding and forging are designed for people with
no metalwork experience.”35 Sculptures abound throughout the site, and the activities that now take
place within the west cast shed keep alive the tradition of iron-making in creative fashion. Since Sloss’s
redevelopment, other postindustrial-related projects have cropped up to create a small network of
recreational and commercial sites related to Birmingham’s industrial past. The Jones Valley Trail follows a
former railroad corridor linking Sloss to Railroad Park, a 19-acre green space opened in 2010 and
adjacent to downtown rail lines. Just blocks south of Sloss is the Market at Pepper Place, a hub of
commercial redevelopment in what was once a Dr. Pepper Bottling Plant. Efforts to preserve Sloss
Furnaces in the 1970s and 1980s thus not only saved the furnace complex, but helped to kickstart
preservation and redevelopment efforts radiating out from its nexus in the ensuing decades.
Sloss is an anomaly. Most integrated, nineteenth-century blast furnace complexes of this scale
were demolished in the twentieth century’s waning decades. By the 1980s, the iron and steel industry
had largely shifted from use of traditional integrated mills to mini mills, which rely on electric arc
furnaces to melt scrap metal. Smaller and more flexible than large-scale turn-of-the-century complexes,
34 Utz, Sloss Furnaces, 90-96, 102-103; Glader, “Steeling Away”; Germer, “Sloss Furnaces National Historic
Landmark,” 83; “Sloss Fright Furnace Shut Down,” Fright Furnace at Sloss, accessed December 15, 2022, Fright
Furnace | Birmingham's Haunted House; “Home Page” and “Venues,” The World Games 2022, Birmingham, USA,
accessed December 15, 2022, The World Games 2022 | Birmingham, USA (twg2022.com).
35 “About,” Sloss Metal Arts, accessed December 15, 2022, About | Sloss Metal Arts.

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operations at mini mills can be ramped up or slowed down to reflect market demand.36 As corporations
moved production abroad, where cheaper labor and fewer environmental regulations kept production
costs lower, they left behind a landscape that Steven High and David W. Lewis have deemed a “corporate
wasteland.”37 A much more common outcome for complexes such as Sloss can be seen in Youngstown,
Ohio, where local efforts ultimately failed to preserve the Jeannette blast furnace. A letter from Jim
Waters to Julius A. Simchick, Jr. of the Ohio Historical Society reveals that both cities were aware of their
mutual preservation efforts. Waters acknowledged that “sharing information and problems should be
beneficial to both projects.” The high cost of renovation—including asbestos cleanup—and “no
groundswell of public support” eventually spelled the end in Youngstown. The Jeannette furnace was
demolished in January 1997.38
In Birmingham, we can recall criticism the SFA faced in their efforts to preserve Sloss. Leo
Lukasik, in his letter to Mayor Arrington, called for the site’s demolition, noting that “sightseers and
visitors can see the real thing in operation in Birmingham anytime they want to at T.C.I.” This site, the
famed Ensley Steel Works, has since vanished. Ensley served as an urban explorer’s paradise for several
years, with people tagging many of its buildings with graffiti before most of the site was demolished in
2019. The former entrance has been blocked by a concrete berm. Only a handful of structures remain,
including a row of smokestacks that now stand as sentinels guarding over 600 acres of overgrown land.39
36 Raymond Monroe, “The Rise of the US Steel Industry,” The Bridge [National Academy of Engineering] 54, no. 1
(Spring 2024): 11-12.
37 Steven High and David W. Lewis, Corporate Wasteland: The Landscape and Memory of Deindustrialization
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), 79. Given their relative scarcity, preserved blast furnace complexes offer
an alternative cultural practice to the ritualized demolition of similar places discussed in High’s study. To view a
televised demolition of a factory, or the slow and methodical work of a wrecking ball, suggested to viewers a
definitive crossing of a threshold from an industrial past to a postindustrial future. The public spectacle of
destruction became a “ritualized [marker] of economic change” (28, 34).
38 Jim Waters to Julius A. Simchick, Jr., December 21, 1981, AR 672, Box 55, Folder 14, Papers of Richard Arrington,
Jr., BPLA.
39 Most of the site was demolished in May 2019. See “TCI Ensley Steel,” Abandoned Southeast, Preserving the Past,
accessed December 16, 2022, TCI Ensley Steel – Abandoned Southeast.

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Unlike the dozens of mine tours that have cropped up throughout the nation in the last half
century, only a handful of historic blast furnace complexes have been preserved.40 Sloss Furnaces was
the first when it opened to the public in 1983, but two others have since entered the conversation
around the turn of the twenty-first century. Just outside of Pittsburgh, Rivers of Steel presents the Carrie
Blast Furnaces 6 and 7, in addition to a handful of other structures related to steel production and the
1892 Battle of Homestead. Although Pittsburgh is famed for its steel production, the Carrie Furnaces
produced iron, and the tour covers much of the same production process. Once poured into torpedo
cars, the molten iron would be transported across the Monongahela River on a hot metal bridge to the
Steel Works in Homestead.41 Today, only a few structures from the Homestead Works remain, and have
been thematically reincorporated into The Waterfront, a commercial, open-air shopping center with
retail outlets, restaurants, hotels, and a movie theater. 12 smokestacks from the vanished Steel Works,
which flank the primary driveway entering the retail space, function as the shopping center’s thematic
icon on signage and advertisements. Other structures, including a monumental gantry crane, a dinkey
engine, and a 12,000-ton hydraulic forging press, lie scattered across the landscape.
40 Outside of the United States, certain regions also host redeveloped blast furnace sites. See, for example, the
Volklingen Ironworks in Germany’s Saarland region.
41 Tour of Carrie Blast Furnaces National Historic Landmark, Rivers of Steel Industrial Tour taken by author in
Homestead, Pennsylvania, July 1, 2022.
Figures 95 and 96 – A postcard from the 1930s showing the Ensley Steel Works. On the right, a present-day image of five of the
seven remaining smokestacks on-site. The rest of the complex is gone. Images courtesy of author.

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The significance attributed to these various sites and structures vary. Some, such as the Pump
House—site of 1892 Battle of Homestead, one of the most important events in American labor history—
offers adequate interpretive signage and is occasionally opens for tours.42 Other structures sit quietly out
of sight, unnoticed by the average guests. The monumental gantry crane, fenced off for safety reasons
and offering no interpretive signage, overhangs the Monongahela River while separating the parking
areas of two adjacent hotels. A modest dinkey engine rests among flower beds within a traffic circle in
the center of the retail space, while smoothed-over rails extend from the engine a few feet in each
direction. The 12,000-ton press sits hidden in a back corner of the Lowe’s parking lot. To build the press,
workers had to dig down 30 feet to pour a giant concrete pad on which to support it. Each morning,
everybody in Homestead knew when the press was stamping out massive ingots of steel because they
could see the ripples in their coffee. When crews were tearing down the steel mill, they realized the
press was too big to remove.43 It has remained in place ever since. The structure has no symbolic
placement within the shopping center’s larger design, leaving one to encounter it only by chance. The
press’s placement appears random, but its sheer size and immovability emphasize the scale of industrial
work done in Homestead’s past. These structures collectively provide the Waterfront with a vague and
nondescript industrial atmosphere. Brick buildings, imitation gas lamps, and the historic Homestead
Grays Bridge towering overhead all provide an industrial ambiance shorn of its rougher edges. This
commercial, themed image of Pittsburgh’s industrial past almost seems appealing when ignoring the
legacy of strife and exploitation that concluded with the pivotal clash between strikers and Pinkerton
agents in 1892 on this very site.
At the Carrie Blast Furnaces across the river from the Waterfront shopping center, redevelopers
have left nature, graffiti, and the years between production and tourism as part of the furnaces’ story.
42 “The Pump House,” Rivers of Steel, accessed April 7, 2024, Pump House — Rivers of Steel.
43 Tour of Carrie Blast Furnaces National Historic Landmark taken by author, July 1, 2022.

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The Iron Garden highlights much of the flora and fauna that have reclaimed the land. The Carrie Deer, a
metal sculpture made by former workers with nothing but materials on-site when the site sat dormant,
rests on display within the furnace complex as a testament to the adaptive and aesthetic role industry’s
image has come to play in our postindustrial vernacular. This metallic animal is an integral draw for
tourists. The willingness to allow nature to take its course, and the preservation of early graffiti on-site,
are two of the primary ways Rivers of Steel has distinguished itself as a tourist site from its predecessor
in Birmingham. Perhaps Sloss, through its Metal Arts Program, could encourage a team of local
blacksmiths to design and construct a monumental sculpture on-site that speaks to its legacy of racial
exploitation in similar fashion to that done by former workers in Pennsylvania. Such an artistic
representation, if incorporated into the complex, could recenter this element of Sloss’s past in the tourist
experience.
In Bethlehem, postindustrial theming has taken a different route. In addition to the construction
of a public walkway atop the elevated Hoover-Mason Trestle spanning Bethlehem’s five preserved blast
furnaces, the city also boasts an adjacent Sands (now Wind Creek) Casino. Sheldon Adelson and the Las
Vegas Sands Corporation opened the casino in 2009 on top of Bethlehem Steel’s former ore yard. Chloe
Taft discusses the subtle and directed use of industrial theming in the casino, which included “exposed
brick and beams, gabled roofs, and orange lights meant to evoke the glow of the operating mill.” Taft
shows how developers purposely made the theme underwhelming because, in many people’s opinions,
the theme was meant to appease the locale and ease the transition from steel to slots, rather than
provide an exoticized, faraway landscape into which tourists might escape. The theme presented
Bethlehem at its industrial height (circa 1942), avoiding its more recent, messier past. Bethlehem’s
casino thus employs a more subtle and refined theme than those typically found on the Las Vegas Strip,
though it is no less a theme. Taft’s aim is to reveal the ways in which preservation and development have

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long been a “part of the same process.”44 The historicized, industrial theming of Sheldon Adelson’s
casino in Bethlehem is perhaps the most direct correlation we have yet encountered between
postindustrial tourism and the gaming industry, but it is not likely to be the last.
Given Vulcan’s participation in the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, and his subsequent journey
from the Alabama State Fairgrounds to display atop Red Mountain, Birmingham historically conveyed
how it perceived its urban character through sculpture in a manner distinct from Pittsburgh and
Bethlehem. While iron and steel have been integral to the identity of those in Pennsylvania’s Mon and
Lehigh Valleys, rarely were these industries captured in such iconic and aesthetic fashion. Birmingham
remains unique in its exhibition of two iron colossi from opposite ends of its industrial era. Each tells a
story of the city’s industrial character, but Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark holds a much more
layered interpretation of Birmingham’s past. The site also offers a unique way of adventuring within and
among the ruins of the blast furnaces in a way wholly distinct from its counterparts to the north. One
can explore the guts of the Carrie Blast Furnaces 6 and 7 in Pittsburgh, but only when accompanied by a
guide. In Bethlehem, one can stand in the midst of the company’s five blast furnaces—a spectacle in its
own right—but only from the concrete walkway in front of them. Only at Sloss can one journey
unaccompanied through the complex, absorbing the intricate complexity and immense scale of the
structures at one’s own pace. This experience, a form of sanctioned urban exploration, greatly
contributes to the sense of adventure that postindustrial tourism facilitates. While there are layers upon
layers of technological and social history up for interpretation at Sloss, this adventurous impulse has
fastened onto the structures themselves, affording visitors with a sublime experience unlike any other in
the country.
44 Chloe E. Taft, From Steel to Slots: Casino Capitalism in the Postindustrial City (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 2016), 58, 88-90, 254.

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Because Sloss offers so visceral an experience, it ironically fits within a similar framework to that
of Vulcan and the World’s Fairs that preceded it. It shocks and awes, if nevertheless achieving this effect
from the opposite shoreline of visual representation. Vulcan towered over visitors within the Palace of
Mines and Metallurgy as they looked up in wonder. They viewed a sculpture, cast and assembled by
Moretti and his crew. Sloss’s vernacular aesthetic would eventually come to replace him as the visual
representation of Birmingham’s iron industry by the late twentieth century. The narratives and stories
offered by this furnace complex were (and remain) myriad. The net effect of the more participatory and
immersive experience of journeying through the site nevertheless remains similar to that experienced at
the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. Tourists, standing within the labyrinthine complex, again look up in
awe at the enigmatic furnaces and their byzantine inner workings. The desire to understand how these
machines work highlights the persistence of the didactic impulse rooted in decades of past industrial
tourism. But didactic understanding of how the site functioned is no longer a requirement; simply
appreciating the haunting beauty of these sleeping giants suffices. Industry at Sloss offers the sublime
experience of viewing something not quite decipherable—full of mystery and allure. What lies beyond
the next corner is cause for excitement. This journey entertains, but can be tempered and enriched by
the narratives of racial exploitation, mechanization, decline, and postindustrial rebirth. These stories are
there, waiting to be discovered within the bowels of this iron colossus.

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Chapter 9: Chocolate World and the Global Diffusion of Hershey’s Community
Hershey’s factory tour had become a victim of its own success. By 1970, its operation was no
longer tenable. In addition to space and sanitation challenges within the factory, the company itself was
evolving. In the 1960s, Hershey added two plants in Ontario and California, as well as started a small
manufacturing venture in Mexico. Diversification of its holdings led the company to rename itself the
Hershey Foods Corporation in 1968. It began its first nationwide consumer advertising program two
years later. The company’s relation to its workers and the town in which they lived was also changing.
Union gains and pay raises increased through the 1960s, with a union shop in place by 1969. Raw
material costs, particularly for cocoa beans, continued to rise in tandem with the cost of labor. The town
itself was becoming less a “company” town than ever before, as the Hershey Trust began divesting itself
of utilities it had owned and operated since the town’s inception in 1903. The factory tour had always
functioned as an integral part of the company’s homegrown public relations efforts, but at such a volatile
moment in its history, the company realized a change was needed. With close to a million guests
shuffling through the factory corridors each year, executives decided it was time to close.
This chapter explores what replaced the factor tour—arguably the most successful postindustrial
tourism attraction in the United States to date: Chocolate World. Part factory tour, part theme park ride,
Chocolate World opened in 1973 alongside a newly revamped and enclosed theme park in Hershey as
the nation’s first corporate visitor center. It has endured for over 50 years as an ever-evolving tourist site
and has spawned numerous iterations by other companies seeking to emulate the success of
Pennsylvania’s premiere chocolate company. This chapter examines three key issues that clarify the
history of Hershey in the late twentieth century, offering a portrait of a company town changed by both
gradual deindustrialization and the rise of the service economy. First, it highlights the Hershey Foods
Corporation’s embrace of entertainment. The concurrent closure of the factory tour and the
modernization of Hershey’s amusement park in the early 1970s created a historically contingent scenario

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in which theme park developer R. Duell and Associates designed a factory tour theme park ride.
Chocolate World’s manifestation of “boom” signals the quintessential factory process: the assembly line.
But unlike its plant tour predecessor, where guests viewed the manufacture of products on such lines,
Chocolate World places guests themselves on the assembly line, embracing a dark ride conveyance
system to immerse guests within a quasi-fantastical sequence of production.
Although Chocolate World has achieved widespread and enduring success as a nationally
recognized tourist attraction, its acclaim is not without drawbacks. The second issue this chapter
highlights concerns the company’s global shift in corporate policy and production in the 1970s. As
Hershey shifted its manufacturing and branding abroad, so too did its entertainment wing expand its
scope globally. In its conversion and enclosure as a theme park, Hershey Park no longer remained a
space for local recreation and leisure. Nor did the new simulated factory tour extol the local virtues of its
surrounding town. Rather, the new attraction shifted its focus to its namesake: the world. Thirdly, this
chapters covers the consequent changes to the town of Hershey, in both its jobs and identity. Chocolate
World lies at the crux of these three issues. As the company’s flagship attraction, the ride played a
pivotal role masking, and easing, this global shift and the local ramifications that ensued. The embrace of
the global economy marked the very loss for Hershey of what made so many postindustrial tourist
attractions succeed in the first place: community. Hershey today has arrived as a nationally recognized
tourist town, but this success also dismantled the acute sense of place the original factory tour
manufactured. With Chocolate World’s global success came the loss of its local community flavor.
The Entertainment Turn
On May 21, 1970, the company-appointed Visitor Tour Task Team issued their “Final
Recommendation Report” detailing four alternative options for how best to move forward with the
closure of the factory tour. The last of the four alternatives, which the team unanimously agreed was

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best, was establishment of a new visitor tour facility away from the plant.1 Creating a new visitor facility
addressed every issue posed by the factory tour’s constraints. A new facility would eliminate both inplant and in-town traffic congestion and offer amenities such a retail space, restaurants, and restrooms.
A new facility also sidestepped the issues of safety and sanitation that had proved a source of constant
worry for Hershey executives. This new site, the task team felt, could be “developed in a controlled
manner.”2 This signified not just control of visitor flow, but control over the narrative the company
wished to convey. The task team feared that visitors who had long grown accustomed to the intimate,
up-close nature of the plant tour would chafe at an experience removed from the site of production.
Although the company discussed numerous ways to overcome this “loss of [the] authentic ‘Plant Tour’
flavor,” including relocating portions of actual production in a “mini-plant” where one product could be
manufactured on a small-batch scale, executives were ultimately willing to live with this sacrifice.3
One additional factor loomed large over discussions about a new visitor facility for Hershey’s
reimagined factory tour: the pending modernization of nearby Hershey Park. The Park was managed by a
separate entity, Hershey Estates, but both the Estates and the Hershey Foods Corporation realized that
their objectives were beginning to align as the latter undertook efforts to establish a dedicated visitor
facility. Hershey Foods executives realized that to achieve a recreated “mini-plant” facility within a
dedicated tourist space would require expertise from design and display houses—entities with which
Hershey Estates was conversing to update Hershey Park. Officials from both the Estates and the Foods
Corporation realized that the location of a new visitor facility might synergize with redevelopment of a
new park entrance away from Chocolate Avenue. The stadium parking area at which tour guests were
1
“Visitor Tour Task Team, Final Recommendation Report,” May 21, 1970, Accession 200706, Box 1, Folder 3, Don
Papson Papers, The Hershey Company Collection, Hershey Community Archives, Hershey, Pennsylvania [hereafter
HCA]. The three other alternatives included elimination of the plant tour, modification of the plant tour, which
included discussion of redirecting a tour via the “monorail through [the] plant,” and invitation-only tours.
2
Ibid.
3
J. H. Bott to Task Team, “Summary Report,” May 5, 1970, Accession 200706, Box 2, Folder 3, Don Papson Papers,
HCA; J. H. Bott, “Meeting with R. Bucher in reference to alternate plant location tour facility,” June 23, 1970,
Accession 200706, Box 2, Folder 4, Don Papson Papers, HCA.

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already expected to park quickly became “the focal point for visitors to Hershey” by both Hershey
Estates and Hershey Foods Corporation.4
It was in this vicinity of West Derry Road and Park Boulevard,
roughly a mile west of the plant, that the future of Hershey’s factory tour would take shape in
conjunction with Hershey Estates’ quest to modernize, enclose, and theme its amusement park.
The transformation of Hershey Park into a theme park unfolded within the context of the town’s
own shifting identity. For over half a century, the town of Hershey had operated as a company town.
Residents paid a single service bill at the company department store for all their basic utilities and needs.
This included water and electricity, as well as waste disposal and groceries. Children not enrolled in the
Hershey Industrial School (for orphan boys) attended public schools built by Milton. This model began to
change in the mid-1960s, as Hershey evolved into a suburban town more typical of mid-century America.
The Hershey Trust began withdrawing investment in much of the town’s infrastructure. The public
township replaced the chocolate company’s private security with a taxpayer-financed police force, and
established a township building code. The trust divested itself of the town’s utilities. By 1965, the
Hershey Electric Company was no longer producing its own power. In 1969, Hershey Estates sold the
Hershey Telephone Company to an outside buyer. The first taxpayer-financed public school began
operation in the early 1970s.5
Hershey Park, once a crown jewel of the utopian community the company touted through its
“bar card” advertising, had become run-down and neglected. The Hershey Estates had made little to no
investments since Milton’s death in 1945. Despite the occasional addition of rides and attractions, the
4
Santangelo to Zimmerman, “Report: The Present and Future of the Plant Visitors Program,” August 4, 1969, Don
Papson Papers, HCA; Tour Facility Committee, “Tour Facility – Corporate Advisory Committee,” meeting minutes,
November 30, 1970, Accession 200706, Box 2, Folder 1, Don Papson Papers, HCA.
5 Peter Kurie, In Chocolate We Trust: The Hershey Company Town Unwrapped (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 48-52; Mary Davidoff Houts and Pamela Cassidy Whitenack, Hershey, Images of America
series (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2000), 102-103, 116. Establishment of the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center
in the early 1970s brought not just an increase in population but changing demographics to Derry Township, as
well. Medical professionals and students now worked alongside longstanding factory workers in town, with the
Hershey Medical Center employing more than 6,000 employees by the 1990s.

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park’s development had stagnated by midcentury. The open park layout, with multiple entrances,
exacerbated issues of vandalism and petty theft in the neglected park grounds.6 The Walt Disney
Company, meanwhile, had opened Disneyland in Anaheim, California in 1955. Hershey trustees, inspired
by Disney’s surging popularity and the emergence of a nascent theme park industry in the 1960s, sought
to capitalize on this momentum. Using money generated from the divestment of the town’s
infrastructure and utilities, Hershey invited consultants from Southern California to evaluate how best to
modernize and transform their amusement park.7 What had originally been parkland and pleasure
grounds for factory workers designed in 1907 was soon to become a bona fide theme park with national
tourist appeal.
Hershey’s actions thus far, whether establishing alternate manufacturing bases in Ontario and
California, or withdrawing investment in its town infrastructure, signaled hallmark moves of subtle and
gradual deindustrialization. But its renewed focus on transforming its park and pleasure grounds into a
nationally recognized theme park also highlight the company’s transition to a service economy. The town
of Hershey already had in place the basic tourist infrastructure needed to establish more centrally a
service-oriented landscape that catered to incoming tourists rather than local workers. Transformation of
the town’s park represented a logical move towards this service economy that was quickly amassing to
meet increased tourist demand across the country.
In June 1971, James E. Bobb, president of Hershey Estates, announced it had hired Economic
Research Associates, a management consulting firm, and R. Duell and Associates, “an organization of
creative planners who specialize in the design of recreational facilities,” to help conceptualize phased
redevelopment of the park. R. Duell and Associates, based out of Santa Monica, California, had
previously worked on both Astroworld and Busch Gardens in Houston, Texas, as well as Six Flags Over
6 Pamela Cassidy Whitenack, Hersheypark, Images of America series (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2006, 83.
7 Kurie, In Chocolate We Trust, 50.

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Texas and Six Flags Over Georgia.8
In 1971, Hershey Estates rebranded the site Hersheypark, enclosed the
space with fencing, and, to the dismay of locals, established a one-price admission of $3.50 per adult.
Hershey Estates assumed sole ownership of the monorail, originally owned jointly with Hershey Foods
Corporation, for exclusive use as a ride within the enclosed park. Use of Station No. 2 near the factory
entrance, and the subsequent use as a means of transport to the factory tour, ended. The monorail
would continue to provide bird’s eye views of the surrounding town and factory, but only as a park
attraction.9 Bobb, in his announcement of the hiring of Economic Research Associates and R. Duell and
Associates, stated notably that “the studies are being coordinated with the plans announced by Hershey
Foods for a new [visitor] facility adjacent to HERSHEYPARK.”10
Lou Santangelo, overseeing a Tour Services Department increasingly under-equipped to handle
thousands of guests each day, began inquiring in the late 1960s with other corporations who offered
tourist opportunities of different sorts. A 1973 article in the Hershey Star noted that the town’s “factory
tour is enlarging to become a world’s-fair-type educational experience.”11 The companies Santangelo
began reaching out to in the late 1960s demonstrate a viable lineage to this conclusion. Santangelo
contacted numerous corporations who had designed exhibits or pavilions for the 1964 New York World’s
Fair, including Pepsi-Cola, General Motors, Johnson and Johnson, and Disney. Santangelo also visited
Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida, where the reimagined Busch tour “was built into the factory at the
8 Memo to Management newsletter, June 10, 1971, Unit 232 Shelf 9.1A, Box 1, Folder 36, The Hershey Company
Employee Newsletters Collection, HCA.
9 Whitenack, Hersheypark, 83-84; Memo to Management newsletter, January 24, 1969, Unit 232 Shelf 9.1A, Box 1,
Folder 34, The Hershey Company Employee Newsletters Collection, HCA.
10 Memo to Management newsletter, June 10, 1971, The Hershey Company Employee Newsletters Collection;
Memo to Management newsletter, December 29, 1971, Unit 232 Shelf 9.1A, Box 1, Folder 36, The Hershey
Company Employee Newsletters Collection, HCA.
11 Marcia Rae Pipegrass, “A Point of Interest: Growth of Hershey Complex Will Affect Us,” Hershey Star, 1973,
Accession 200539, Box 1, Folder 4, Don Papson Papers, HCA.

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time of its construction” in 1959.12 These discussions and visits increasingly brought Santangelo, and
eventually the Visitor Tour Task Team, within the realm of entertainment.
In June 1970, Hershey Estates and the Hershey Foods Corporation held a series of joint
conferences to discuss the latter’s plans to reimagine and relocate its factory tour. Those in the
conference hoped “to complement our new tour facility with the Hershey Estates expansion of their park
complex.” In discussing potential site selection, several participants in a meeting on June 3 agreed that
location of the tour facility near the dedicated park entrance showed promise. The meeting report
concluded that “now is the time for Hershey Foods and Hershey Estates to get involved in joint meetings
with R. Duell & Associates and ERA to discuss openly” their plans for “the two parties to unveil their own
independent ideas.”13 From its inception, Hershey’s reimagined factory tour was linked both spatially and
conceptually to the redevelopment of the theme park. Two weeks later, on June 15, representatives
from both companies, with a member of R. Duell and Associates in attendance, again elaborated on the
possibility for collaboration in creating a tourist “hub” for both projects.
Nick Plebani raised the question of crowd control and the “desirability of the ‘park crowd’ as
Hershey Foods tourists.” Ira West of R. Duell and Associates suggested crowds could best be managed
“by use of a conveyance system which could accommodate approximately 3,000-4,000 tourists per
hour.” This ride, West argued, “would in itself promote the tour and Hershey products due to its
entertainment value.”14 It was at this point that a reimagined factory tour firmly entered the realm of
entertainment, much more aligned with the design firm’s redevelopment of the park than with the
12 “Visitors Program Study & Developments,” November 17, 1971, Accession 200706, Box 2, Folder 1, Don Papson
Papers, HCA; Visitors Tour Task Team, “Conference Reports,” May 28 and July 2, 1970, Accession 200706, Box 2,
Folder 4, Don Papson Papers, HCA. One of the professional display houses that conducted preliminary
investigations for the Hershey Foods Corporation on transforming its factory tour had designed the Pepsi Cola
Exhibit at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York.
13 Visitors Tour Task Team, “Summary Report,” June 3, 1970, Accession 200706, Box 2, Folder 4, Don Papson
Papers, HCA.
14 Ibid.

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original factory tour. In the ensuing months and years, Hershey executives would continue to debate
where on the spectrum of entertainment and education they wanted their project to land, but West’s
mention of a “conveyance system” at this June 15 meeting planted the seeds for envisioning the new
factory tour as a ride.
Hershey received other proposals for its new tour facility, but ultimately hired R. Duell &
Associates.15 The primary reason was likely due to the firm’s current involvement in the “expansion of
the Hershey Park Facility,” which would guarantee “an integration of interest” for all parties. Hershey
Foods, in cooperation with Hershey Estates, was assembling a design team for the reimagined factory
tour that firmly situated it within the realm of entertainment. By the time of their hire, R. Duell &
Associates already had several theme park projects under their belts. The firm would complete Six Flags
Magic Mountain in Valencia, California in 1971, concurrent with its work on Hersheypark. Hershey also
brought in a special effects man from MGM, Ralph Schwartz, who had worked on the set design for films
such as The Ten Commandments (1956) and Mutiny on the Bounty (1962).16 Everyone involved agreed
that showcasing the production of chocolate was paramount. The site selection near the park entrance,
roughly a mile away from the factory, made the trucking and transport of raw materials or finishing
goods a difficult prospect. Simulation, then, became the preferred solution. The use of an esteemed firm
with experience in theme park design, as well as Hollywood special effects artists, gave Hershey
15 One of the several alternative proposals, by the design firm of de Martin – Marona & Associates, suggested a
proposed theme for the tour facility designed around the “Land of the Chocolatiers.” Each step in the production
process, rather than simply explain the operation from an educational point of view, would be reimagined in a
fantastical way. The tour would begin in the “Cocoa Forest,” where the group would meet their guide, “Miss Candy
Kiss.” After leaving the maze of cocoa bean trees in the “Cocoa Forest,” visitors would enter the “Dragon’s Den”
(roasters), the “Windmill” (grinding nibs), the “Milkyway” (milk and sugar ingredients), and the “Chocolapuss”
(conch machines). This proposal, although unselected, sheds light on the extent to which Hershey could have
diluted and transformed the educational appeal of its reimagined factory tour. See “Tour Facility Proposed by de
Martin – Marona & Associates, July 1, 1970, Accession 200706, Box 2, Folder 4, Don Papson Papers, HCA.
16 Memo to Management newsletter, November 24, 1971, Unit 232 Shelf 9.1A, Box 1, Folder 36, The Hershey
Company Employee Newsletters Collection, HCA.

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executives what they believed would be the best chance to simulate chocolate production in as realistic
and entertaining a manner as possible.
Simulation and Optics
Realizing the extent to which Disney and its theme park in Anaheim had captured the public
imagination, Hershey jumped on the rising tide of theme park popularity in both the redevelopment of
its dilapidated amusement park and in the reimagining of its factory tour. The theme park industry itself
had roots in earlier world’s fairs and relied on corporate patronage in its formative years. Roland
Marchand, in Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery, uses the
1939-40 World’s Fair in New York to highlight the gradual transition in corporate exhibit displays to
create lasting impressions on potential consumers of their products. Corporations, Marchand contends,
embraced new visual and aesthetic methods to reach consumers, including the use of motion in exhibits,
audience participation, and simplification of narratives about production. Ideas about corporate
beneficence still lay at the root of exhibits, but the way corporations conveyed the message favored the
“trend toward showmanship rather than reinforce the operational aesthetic.”17 To “simulate, as closely
as possible, factory operations,” Hershey realized it needed a multimedia, multisensory experience
“utilizing sound, smell, and most importantly, motion.” Hershey Foods’ Final Recommendation Report
emphasized that “all efforts should be made to avoid static exhibitry.”18 Marchand shows, however, that
corporations had been cognizant of the need to immerse potential customers within moving exhibits
well before the emergence of theme parks across the country. If Disneyland ignited the fire of mass
theme park appeal in 1955, its sparks had been simmering for years in corporate marketing strategy.
17 Roland Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American
Big Business (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 276. Marchand’s use of the “operational aesthetic”
refers to Neil Harris’s chapter in Humbug: The Art of P. T. Barnum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973)
discussed in Chapter 1.
18 “Hershey Foods Tour Facility – Phase II Final Recommendation Report,” 1970, Accession 200706, Box 2, Folder 1,
Don Papson Papers, HCA.

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Hershey knew it was eliminating its plant tour from public view, and therefore sought ways to
recreate a sense of authenticity with its simulation in both an educational and entertaining way. The
“automated conveyance that will carry visitors into a simulated world of chocolate,” one memo noted,
would be similar to rides experienced by millions at Disneyland and recent World’s Fairs. This meant
attacking multiple senses: “The heat will be felt by visitors as they witness the roasting process. The
smell of milk chocolate will be in the air as the conching process unfolds. The whir and clatter of the
cocoa filling line will be heard as visitors near the end of the ‘tour.’”19 The sense of realism, then, would
stem not from seeing actual production, but from sensory bombardment recreated by leading design
and special effects professionals from the entertainment industry.
R. Duell & Associates’ creative sketches provide some of the earliest looks at how this sense of
immersion could be achieved. Over the course of 28 creative sketches, the design firm mapped out a
way for visitors to pass alongside, around, and in some cases through the stages of chocolate
manufacture. Visitors seated in vehicles first pass by larger-than-life, transect images of cacao beans and
a large image of the globe before arriving in the tropics, where they see farmers at work harvesting the
raw materials and a steamship loading cargo ready for transport. Visitors then arrive at the outskirts of
the Hershey factory. In one sketch, the track has been rendered to appear like a rail line, reaffirming the
notion that the visitors themselves, like the beans, are being transported for processing. This sense of
audience participation in the production process takes on a new level with the first creative sketches of
the factory interior.
19 “Chocolate World Prepares for Spring 1973 Opening,” Horizons vol. 4, no. 3 (August 1972), Unit 232, Shelf 9.3A,
Box 3, Folder 7, The Hershey Company Employee Newsletters Collection, HCA.

316
Visitors are immediately sent through a circular roasting oven, where heat will be pumped in to
simulate the roasting process. Again, visitors are not viewing bean roasting (which was withheld from
view on the original factory tour), but are themselves “roasted” as they journey into the factory. The
remaining sketches demonstrate how R. Duell & Associates envisioned visitors would journey alongside
the remaining stages of production, and reveal a nascent industrial theme in both shape and color
palette. Grays and browns dominate each sketch, with various pipes, nozzles, and machine surfaces
facilitating the movement of chocolate, in either liquid or molded form, through the plant. Even though
Hershey remained committed to the tour’s educational value, certain sketches reveal a desire to
immerse visitors within a complex and alluring factory atmosphere in which operations seem more
mysterious and overwhelming than clear and coherent.20 If captured in the ride design, this sense of
mystery and complexity would heighten the entertainment value for visitors, engineering the impression
that they had become one part of many in an intricate operation.
With its design team in place and a clear vision on how to proceed logistically and creatively,
Hershey broke ground for its new tour facility at the corner of Derry Road and Park Boulevard on April 4,
1972. Similar to the original plant tour, there would be no charge to enter the new facility. The center
20 R. Duell and Associates, “Reproductions of color artwork, drawings of Hershey Foods Tour,” March 15, 1971,
Accession 200706, Box 1, Folder 3, Don Papson Papers, HCA.
Figures 97 and 98 – Design sketches by R. Duell and Associates depicting the passenger entrance into the cylindrical roasting oven,
prepared March 15, 1971. In the lefthand sketch, intricate pipework reinforces the complexity of the production process for guests as
they are immersed in the roasting process. Images courtesy of the Hershey Community Archives.

317
was designed to accommodate 18,000 guests per day initially, with room for expansion in future years.
The proposal suggested using a “totally controlled environment and a continuous conveyance system
which could accommodate 5,000 tourists per hour.”21
These conditions solved two problems Hershey
had experienced with its factory tour. The ride system would enable the facility to process thousands of
guests per hour and accommodate peak summer crowds without the need for dedicated guides. In
addition to resolving capacity issues, the design firm’s narrative vision provided an answer to Hershey’s
disjointed and incomplete tour route through the plant. With complete control over the simulated
environment, Hershey could now tell what it viewed as the complete picture of chocolate production,
from cacao bean extraction in the tropics to the sale of packaged goods. From the corporate perspective,
the ride design was not just more entertaining, but more educational because every step of the process
could be shown at last.
The new ride design and narrative allowed Hershey to bring the story it had described in its
souvenir booklets and visitor center displays—one of global involvement—to the forefront of the tour
experience. In a letter to Santangelo on February 16, 1972, Richard A. Zimmerman wrote, “I like your
suggestion of the name, ‘HERSHEY’s CHOCOLATE WORLD.’ Let’s go ahead on that basis.”22 The original
plant tour had never focused solely on the factory interior, instead incorporating (at a minimum)
discussion of the surrounding town and its various amenities. Chocolate World, as the name suggested,
would broaden the lens even further, incorporating not just the surrounding town and dairy farms, but
the tropical locations from which Hershey received its raw materials. Public Relations assistant Ken
Bowers stated, “We hope to accommodate visitors more comfortably and show them more. Although
there is a loss of authenticity, we can show a more complete idea and picture of what actually goes on.”
21 Hershey Foods Corporation, Press Release, April 4, 1972, Accession 92004, Box 37, Folder 7, The Hershey
Entertainment & Resorts Company Collection, HCA; Visitors Tour Task Team, “Conference Report,” June 15, 1970,
Accession 200706, Box 2, Folder 4, Don Papson Papers, HCA.
22 R. A. Zimmerman to L. F. Santangelo, memo, February 16, 1972, in “Visitor’s Tour notebook, 1969-1973,”
Accession 200706, Box 2, Folder 1, Don Papson Papers, HCA.

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Bowers went on to suggest that the new ride will afford visitors the opportunity to “move about in a
special car, complete with sound system and narration, from the cocoa plantations of Brazil to the dairy
farms of Lancaster County to the inside of the Hershey Chocolate factory, without moving a muscle.”23
Bowers’s comments reveal recognition that the company was wrestling with the loss of what
many considered to be the hallmark of the plant tour—its intimate and personal nature. “Perhaps the
greatest loss will be that atmosphere created for our visitors by many of our employees who have
worked along the tour route over the years,” one memo noted, before going on to acknowledge Lena
Foshetti, a packer in the cocoa department, “who greeted literally hundreds of thousands of our visitors
with a genuinely warm smile and, sometimes, a friendly comment.”24 This corporate memo
acknowledged that although Chocolate World would tell a more encompassing story, it would do so in a
less personal manner. Whereas automation wreaked havoc on various industries across the country in
the second half of the twentieth century, in Hershey it was not the factory, but its factory tour that (first)
turned to automation. The friendly factory workers such as Foshetti, and the many tour guides who
escorted groups through the plant, would now be replaced by an automated ride.
One former tour guide, Mrs. Walter Meily, who began working in 1943, recalled that “we really
could only show the public the wrapping and packaging processes.” Meily went on to suggest that with
Chocolate World, “people can see the whole story, so it is much more real. We know the public will enjoy
it.”25 Chocolate World thus represented a trade-off in what the company viewed as narrative
authenticity. The new visitor facility would enable it to tell the full story of chocolate production via
simulation, where before a restricted view of actual operations was limited to the final stages of
23 Betsy Rupe, “A Point of Interest: Hershey—Kiss It Good-bye,” Hershey Star, May 1973, Accession 200539, Box 1,
Folder 4, Don Papson Papers, HCA.
24 Memo to Management newsletter, June 26, 1973, Unit 232 Shelf 9.1A, Box 1, Folder 38, The Hershey Company
Employee Newsletters Collection, HCA.
25 Mary Lou Corlett, “Hershey Will Open New Visitors Center,” The Patriot, June 28, 1973, Accession 95010, Box 3,
Folder 107.

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manufacture. Meily’s remarks reveal that both the plant tour and the new simulation were manicured
presentations. The original tour, although deemed more “authentic” by many internally, was
nevertheless selective in what it presented, regardless of the reasons why. Meily’s comment that the
simulated experience would be more “real” might seem a stretch, but from the perspective of how best
to educate the touring public on the method of production, it makes sense. Many within the company
held fast to the notion that part of Chocolate World’s responsibility was to educate as well as entertain.
The company assembled a screening committee to review R. Duell & Associates draft ride scripts. Several
committee members expressed concern that early scripts skewed too heavily toward entertainment
while not explaining processes with enough clarity and specificity. Some executives went even further,
worrying that children might not realize Chocolate World was a simulation.26
Concern over optics also dominated comments made by the script screening committee on
initial drafts. Several comments from members expressed alarm over how best to portray the extractive
labor in tropical plantations. The ride would begin with a journey past tropical plantations at which
workers harvest cacao beans. R. L. Uhrich suggested that the design team change the locale of this scene
from Brazil to West Africa, where “the picking of the pods is done by the farmer himself, or by hired
laborers,” rather than whole families. “I don’t believe I would make any reference to children being
engaged in this operation, as it is difficult to say what connotation certain activists may put upon that.”27
W. E. Schiller agreed that “West Africa would probably be better than Brazil for the cocoa harvesting
scene,” but also elaborated on what he saw as inaccurate accents for many of the narrators whose voices
would be presented from within the ride vehicles’ sound system. “The characters, particularly the
26 Santangelo conveyed this concern to Ira West of R. Duell & Associates, stating, “I think more emphasis still must
be made that the mechanized tour is a simulation of a tour through the Hershey Chocolate plant. Will children, for
example, understand [the term] ‘simulated environment’?” L. F. Santangelo to Ira R. West, June 1 and October 23,
1972, Accession 200706, Box 1, Folder 6, Don Papson Papers, HCA.
27 R. L. Uhrich to L. F. Santangelo, October 20, 1972, Accession 200706, Box 1, Folder 6, Don Papson Papers, HCA.

320
Pennsylvania farmer, didn’t seem to be true to form, and the speaking accents, especially those of the
milk producer and the Brazilian cocoa farmer, were not right,” Schiller noted.28
James E. Bobb concurred with Schiller’s assessment on accents, but further questioned the
“advisability of the machine noises as sound effects which are described on [the script’s] page 7.
Certainly with all the emphasis on ecology and environment being improved for the benefit of the
worker,” Bobb stated, “these loud machine noises, even though they may exist in certain parts of the
plant, should not be emphasized in a tour of this kind.” Bobb expressed concern that the narrative
placed too much emphasis on the machinery, and not enough on the products being made. “The
machinery should be deemphasized,” Bobb felt, while the products “should be in the forefront.”29 The
comments from Uhrich, Schiller, and Bobb collectively reveal that, even if the company relied heavily on
Brazilian family labor, and the factory was not a paragon of environmental responsibility, the tour need
not raise the public’s eyebrows. Chocolate World in their eyes would present a fuller picture of chocolate
production, but protecting the corporate image was still paramount.
Chocolate World Opens
Hershey’s Chocolate World opened to the public on June 30, 1973 at the cost of $8 million.30
One day prior, the last visitors passed through the corridors of the Hershey factory. An employee memo
from that year stated that the sidewalk in front of 19 E. Chocolate Avenue is “conspicuously bare” for the
first time in decades. A “mid-summer calm” set in around the factory and downtown as Hershey’s tourist
program shifted to the new Hersheypark entrance at West Derry Road and Park Boulevard. At 4 p.m. on
Friday, June 29, James E. Bobb and Lou Santangelo accompanied the last batch of tourists on the final
28 W. E. Schiller to L. F. Santangelo, October 30, 1972, Accession 200706, Box 1, Folder 6, Don Papson Papers, HCA.
29 James E. Bobb to L. F. Santangelo, November 9, 1972, Accession 200706, Box 1, Folder 6, Don Papson Papers,
HCA.
30 “Construction Information for Chocolate World,” Accession 87006, Box 28, Folder 3, The Hershey Company
Collection, HCA.

321
public factory tour.31 Chocolate World had officially assumed the mantle of telling the corporate story of
chocolate. The building’s square footage totaled 100,000 square feet, with the mechanized tour taking
up half of that.32
R. Duell & Associates enlisted the services of two other west coast firms to complete the project.
Arrow Development Company of Mountain View, California, designed and constructed the automated
conveyance system on which 57 five-passenger vehicles equipped with stereophonic sound moved along
a 1,200-foot track. These vehicle modules were programmed to turn toward specific scenes along the
track. Glen Robinson Enterprises of Camarillo, California, meanwhile, designed and built the animated
displays and special visual effects along the route. The ride, excluding loading time, took approximately
nine minutes. Initial tour capacity was 1,800 guests per hour with half the vehicles installed, while full
capacity would eventually reach 3,600 per hour. Chocolate World remained free, but unlike its
predecessor, was open on Saturdays.33
Chocolate World’s ride began with a giant, revolving turntable moving at two feet per second,
around which its 57 vehicles slowly passed. Guests descended a stairway to a stationary center, where a
hostess directed groups to their designated vehicle. Once stepping off the stationary center, guests
shuffled along the rotary band that moves at the same speed as the vehicles. This enabled passengers to
embark and disembark safely while seemingly not moving. The nine-minute ride took visitors past (and
through) 25 scenes illustrating the story of chocolate, from its growing and harvesting in the tropics to
the basic stages of production and distribution. Recorded narration piped into each vehicle as guests
31 Special tours of the plant would continue on a case-by-case basis, but could only be made by the company’s
high-level executives. “Exceptions will be made,” the memo noted, “for new management personnel, celebrities,
ACES groups, and certain extraordinary situations.” Memo to Management newsletter, July 30, 1973, Unit 232
Shelf 9.1A, Box 1, Folder 38, The Hershey Company Employee Newsletters Collection, HCA.
32 Hershey Foods Corporation, “Hershey’s Chocolate World – Statistical Brief,” 1973, Accession 200706, Box 1,
Folder 12, Don Papson Papers, HCA.
33 Hershey Foods Corporation, Press Release, Winter 1973-74, Accession 92004, Box 37, Folder 7, The Hershey
Entertainment & Resorts Company Collection, HCA; Arrow Development Company, “Hershey Tour System,” May
10, 1972, Accession 200706, Box 1, Folder 10, Don Papson Papers, HCA.

322
traversed along the track, with background music and sound effects enriching the scenes. After
reminding guests to always keep their hands and arms inside the vehicles, narration contextualized the
Theobroma cacao, or cacao tree. “The pod which you are now viewing contains 20 to 40 seeds, and it is
these seeds from which chocolate comes.” Glowing lights on a display map indicated the regions of the
cacao tree’s habitat, “hot rainy climates not more than twenty degrees north or south of the Equator.”
Guests then arrived at their first full scene of the tour: the tropical plantations.
Vehicles traveled past dense foliage in which small, thatched huts could be seen. The first scene
guests came upon was that of model workers harvesting the plants. “The cacao plants are harvested on
plantations such as this one in Africa,” the narrator stated. Once the ripened pods had been gathered,
“the pickers break open the wood-like shells with their machetes… at the rate of 500 an hour.” Visitors
traversed past a horse-drawn cart filled with bean shells, as well as a wooden platform on which workers
spread the beans out to be cured and dried in the sun. Guests then came upon the massive hull of a
white steamship with red-lined stacks. A captain’s voice chimed in, “Yep, I’ve been captain of this vessel
for over thirty years, picking up cocoa beans bound for the Hershey plant. We go to the West African
countries of Ghana, Nigeria, the Ivory Coast, the Cameroons, as well as to Brazil, the Dominican Republic,
and Ecuador.”34
Passengers then arrived in dairy country. The narrator regaled guests with statistics reminiscent
of what Carolyn Kitch calls the “quantity narrative style,” meant to impress upon listeners the sheer scale
of manufacturing in Hershey. “Those 65-foot high tanks over there at the Chocolate plant hold 50,000
gallons each of wholesome milk that goes into Hershey chocolate products,” the narrator explained,
before exclaiming, “You should hear how much milk is used yearly by the Hershey plant in Pennsylvania –
nearly 200 million quarts!” Before even entering the factory itself, guests were thus presented with a
34 “Hershey’s Chocolate World – Ride Script,” September 7, 1979, Accession 200539, Box 1, Folder 3, Don Papson
Papers, HCA.

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juxtaposition of worksites, one tropical and primitive, where men worked with machetes to cut down
and cure the beans, the other in dairy country where Hershey trucked and stored enough raw materials
to produce millions, even billions of pounds of chocolate. The narrator directed viewers’ attention to the
towering bean silos, built to expand the company’s storage capacity in the 1950s and take advantage of
price fluctuations in the market.35 The combination of impressive statistics with visualization of the
chocolate plant’s most dominant landmark conveyed to visitors that Hershey’s place in the industry was
unmatched. With guests now aware of the size and scale of chocolate manufacture at Hershey, the
narrator invited passengers into the factory.
36
Once inside, the narrator provided passengers with their first view of the early stages of
chocolate production—stages which were kept from view on the company’s original plant tour. The
narrator first described the cleaning of beans in screening machines, a preliminary step to “remove
stones, dried cocoa pulp, pieces of pod, and other foreign matter.” As a nod to Hershey’s trade secrets
and the reason why these stages could not be shown to guests within the actual plant, the narrator
stated, “The different kinds of cocoa beans are blended according to a formula that years of experience
35 Thom Horvath, “Hershey’s Cocoa Bean Silos,” Railpace Newsmagazine, March 16, 2020, accessed February 23,
2023, https://railpace.com/hersheys-cocoa-bean-silos/.
36 “Hershey’s Chocolate World – Ride Script,” September 7, 1979, Don Papson Papers.
Figures 99 and 100 – On the left, a postcard showcasing the harvesting of cocoa beans in tropical West Africa at the ride’s beginning, c.
1973. Vehicles were programmed to rotate left or right to view specific scenes as they journeyed along the track. On the right, a
postcard depicting visitors’ journey through the roasting oven and past the milling machines, c. 1973. Author’s personal collection.

324
have proved to be the most desirable.” As the narrator described these initial stages, passengers realized
they are approaching an ominous contraption. “The beans are roasted in large revolving cylinders,” the
narrator noted as the vehicles entered the glowing machine, while “currents of air, heated to more than
500 to 560 degrees Fahrenheit pass over the beans as they turn over and over.” Here, the guests became
immersed within the production process, as they themselves were “roasted” with heat piped into the
ride’s cylindrical oven. Although this scene remained off-limits during the original factory tour, what was
shown offered viewers a passive look from behind railings of the manufacturing process. Chocolate
World, with its immersive roaster, transformed this passive view into a participatory, visceral encounter
in which passengers felt the production process.
After roasting, the disembodied voice then directed guests’ attention to the milling process,
depicted on their right, where “that machine passes the cocoa bean through three sets of millstones,
which release the chocolate liquid” from which all products were made.37 The narrator then alerted
passengers to the next stages of manufacture: rolling and conching. Milk chocolate is made by adding
milk, sugar, and additional cocoa butter to the existing liquid chocolate. This mixture, “which is now a
heavy paste, travels through a series of heavy rollers,” which would grind it to a powder state. Guests
then arrived at the conching machine, which Santangelo had noted in a letter to Ira West was taken
directly from the factory. The conching machines had long served as the highlight for Hershey’s plant
tour. Reminiscent of the boosterish rhetoric guides presented on the plant tour, the recorded voice
proudly asserted, “The Hershey plant is the largest of its kind in the world, having nearly two million
square feet of floor space – and one third of the floor space at the plant is devoted to conching.” Viewers
watched as the arms of the heavy rollers stirred the chocolate while the “agitation and generation of
37 Ibid.

325
heat refines the flavor to the highest degree.” The narrator concluded that Hershey’s milk chocolate is
“conched for up to 72 hours.”38
As the ride progressed, overlap with the plant tour intensified. Guests snaked past a moulding
display on their right, where “tempered chocolate is deposited into rows of metal molds” before being
“taken on a bouncy ride through a cooling tunnel.” Guests in the vehicles’ front row sat just feet away
from these displays, affording them a close and uninhibited view of these simulated stages of
manufacture. Another voice, meanwhile, chimed in to remind passengers of the company’s other
notable product, the Kiss. “Psst. Over here – yeah, to your left. Take a look at this kisser,” the voice
beckoned. “That machine drops milk chocolate onto that conveyor belt and they cool in the familiar
form of kisses – and at the rate of millions per day.” Finally, visitors arrived at a wrapping display. “When
it comes to wrapping,” the narrator noted, “there’s not much the skillful men and women who work at
the Hershey factory can tell you – you see, to avoid human contact, virtually all wrapping and packaging
is done by machine.”39
Here, the disembodied voice surprisingly acknowledged the presence of factory workers, who
until this point had been relegated to memory while the machines seemingly operated without human
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
Figures 101 and 102 – On the left, a postcard showing the trip past the refining rolls and conching vats, c. 1973. The company
installed outdated conches from the factory for this section. On the right, a postcard depicting milk chocolate bar moulding,
c. 1973. Author’s personal collection.

326
labor. The only workers visually shown to passengers thus far were those in West Africa harvesting,
curing, and packing the cacao beans for shipment across the Atlantic. Once inside the factory, machines
magically functioned without human intervention. It is odd that the first explicit mention of Hershey’s
workers concerned their lack of commentary on the wrapping department, when the company held in
high regard its employees such as Lena Foshetti and Ken Daniel (who worked in the wrapping
department) and the conversations they had shared with touring guests. The remarks were likely
intended to highlight the health and sanitation standards to which the company adhered, especially with
mention that their wrapping procedures were designed to “avoid human contact.” As FDA regulations
became more stringent in the 1970s, transparency became an increasingly valued asset for companies.
After brief stops at the Quality Assurance Lab and test kitchen, the narrator concluded by asking
passengers to disembark their vehicles and “exit up the stairs to your right and enjoy a visit to our
tropical gardens and turn-of-the-century shops.”40
On October 19, Ken Bowers received a letter from Communicators Associates, Inc., an
advertising and public relations firm, offering constructive criticism of the ride. “Chocolate World needs
polishing,” they stated bluntly, noting that the ride’s designers should be “creating a larger more magical
atmosphere than the reality of a factory.” The ride, the firm believed, “should be more than a factory
tour,” something more akin to a “theatrical presentation that entertains.” The firm suggested
establishing more continuity or a central theme or character to follow—perhaps a talking cocoa bean,
they suggested—to generate a “mood or atmosphere that guides the visitor” through the experience.
The communicators concluded, “We feel less facts and more imagination, taking full advantage of sound
effects and stereo, might make a more memorable impression on tourists than statistics.” Their criticism,
40 Ibid. The ride further reinforced this focus on health and sanitation through its presentation of the Quality
Assurance Lab. Here, “highly specialized technicians analyze every phase of chocolate production.” The narrator
made sure to emphasize that all Hershey products “meet standards set forth by Federal and State regulatory
bodies,” with the company employing experts in nutrition, food science, and microbiology to ensure this.

327
they believed, was “based on a desire to help make Hershey’s Chocolate World something most unlike a
factory tour.” In an internal memo to Santangelo, Bowers established that the company had no intention
of redeveloping the ride to align more closely with the “over ambitious” vision put forth in the letter.41
In fact, it seems Hershey executives were quite satisfied with the balance struck between the
educational carry-over from the factory tour and the entertaining nature of a dark ride sitting just
outside Hersheypark’s entrance. Hershey had never wanted to completely pivot from its factory tour, but
rather reimagine it in a more accessible, comfortable, and comprehensive way than what the confines of
the original tour offered. Chocolate World did embrace elements of the entertainment and theme park
industry, but those in charge of its design and execution also made sure to retain didactic elements. The
immersive roasting oven certainly highlighted the vision of the theme park and entertainment
professionals involved in the project, but the systematic descriptions of manufacturing processes, replete
with boosterish figures and statistics about the company, reinforced Chocolate World’s ties to its
predecessor. If the ride felt too similar to a typical factory tour—as the communicators suggested—
executives likely viewed this as affirmation that they had successfully adapted their public relations
program to growing crowds without sacrificing the legacy of their longstanding plant tour. The company,
moreover, had little reason to worry about the validity of the aforesaid critiques, as attendance was
soaring.
Chocolate World attracted 70,827 visitors in the first week of its debut. By July 26, just under a
month since its opening, 288,942 guests had visited. The facility achieved its one millionth visitor on
November 25, 1973, under five months since opening on June 30. In 1974—its first full year of
operation—Chocolate World received 1,422,465 visitors. Attendance remained stable around 1.5 million
through the rest of the decade, with 1977 achieving a record high of 1,658,939 guests. Between 1974
41 Robert J. Harrington and Ronald L. Isroelit to Kenneth Bowers, October 19, 1973 and Kenneth Bowers to L. F.
Santangelo, October 22, 1973 [response], Accession 200706, Box 1, Folder 9, Don Papson Papers, HCA.

328
and 1980, Chocolate World averaged 1,496,736 visitors annually. In 1978, the company altered its
method of counting guests to reflect only those taking the automated ride rather than entering the
facility. Numbers after this change remained within a ten percent margin, indicating that most who
entered the building decided to take the free ride.42
During the period of July 23-25, 1973, Marketing Research conducted a survey of two hundred
visitors (or families), asking three questions centered on overall impressions of Chocolate World as well
as the most liked and disliked aspects of the new facility. 95 percent of visitors responded to the first
question favorably, with the remaining five percent stating they would have “preferred to see the real
thing” in some capacity. Some of the recurring positive statements suggested the ride was “a remarkable
engineering feat” and was “very educational,” with some considering it “comparable to the World’s Fair.”
A sizable majority thus found the simulation a positive reinterpretation of the factory tour, appreciating
the turn toward entertainment. Most interviewees enjoyed the use of vehicles, but cited the (too fast)
speed of the ride and (too high) audio levels. Two major critiques were the lack of realism and the
absence of free samples—a hallmark of the original plant tour.43 Also missing was the smell of chocolate,
another staple of Chocolate World’s predecessor. As of 1977, the company had not yet included free
samples at tour’s end, although they would reintroduce these in the coming years. The company also
noted that year that it had not “found a practical means of recreating authentic chocolate aroma or of
‘piping’ it from the plant,” but was actively working to find a solution to this.44
Comments from the 1983 Chocolate World Visitors Register reveals an assortment of
impressions, mostly positive. Frequent mentions that the site “smells delicious” and visitors liked the
42 Memo to Management newsletter, July 30, 1973, The Hershey Company Employee Newsletters Collection;
“Some key dates for Hershey’s Chocolate World,” ca. late 1970s, Accession 200706, Box 1, Folder 9, Don Papson
Papers, HCA; “Visitor Statistics, Hershey’s Chocolate World,” January 7, 1981, Accession 87006, Box 28, Folder 3,
The Hershey Company Collection, HCA.
43 Alan L. Gould to L. F. Santangelo, August 15, 1973, Accession 200706, Box 1, Folder 13, Don Papson Papers, HCA.
44 Hershey Foods Corporation, “Questions Frequently Asked by Chocolate World Visitors,” The Hershey Company
Collection.

329
“strong chocolate smell,” suggests that by the end of its first decade in operation, Hershey had found a
way to recreate the famed chocolate aroma. Frustrated guests asking “Where’s our free sample?!” and
“why not give out free chocolate?” reveal that the company continued dragging its feet on inclusion of
free samples into the 1980s. Other comments ranged from comedic (“No Mars Bars!?” and “I prefer
vanilla”) to comparative (“Just as much fun as Disney World!” and “Quite a different tour than Oakdale,
CA”). Many cited the informative and educational nature of the ride, but still reminisced about the
original plant tour. One person commented, “Good, but I wish the factory was still open,” while another
wished to “have seen the real factory.” Certain guests played on this dynamic of realism, with one person
exclaiming, “It’s so fake and gay!” while another recalled, “We all loved the ‘factory’!”45
Escaping to the Retail Rainforest
Feedback on the building in which the ride was housed seemed overwhelmingly positive, as
well. Although the ride served as Chocolate World’s foremost attraction, the building incorporated two
additional features: a historical exhibit and a tropical arboretum. After completing their simulated
journey, guests walked through the “Chronological Area,” a floor exhibit of nostalgic moments from the
company’s history. 24 large hanging “etched graphic murals” illustrated scenes from Milton’s life, old
product packaging, and other elements of early corporate history. A few of the moments depicted were
the groundbreaking for the chocolate factory in 1903 and the opening of Hotel Hershey in 1933, with the
debut of Chocolate World serving as the final entry.46 Larger and more significant to the building’s
operation, however, was the arboretum. Hershey executives had long reflected on the plant tour’s
limited view of chocolate production, relying on souvenir booklets and lobby displays to depict the
tropical landscape in which cacao beans were harvested. Chocolate World brought this exotic climate to
tourists through not only the ride, but also the arboretum. Designers and botanists crafted this space so
45 “Chocolate World Visitors Register,” 1983, Accession 200339, Box 1, Folder 6, HCA.
46 Corlett, “Hershey’s Will Open New Visitors Center”; Hershey Foods Corporation, “Statistical Brief,” Don Papson
Papers.

330
that guests could dine and shop in an immersive, themed retail space quite unique for rural
Pennsylvania. The tropical theming highlighted an (until now) inaccessible stage of chocolate
manufacture, transporting guests from dairy country to a seemingly remote and exotic locale only
reachable within 20 degrees north or south of the equator.
To accomplish this, the team partnered with the Kalwall Corporation of New Hampshire to
design a “Skyroof” suitable for tropical plant growth. The “Skyroof,” built of fiberglass and aluminum,
admitted sunlight while insulating the building from outside, wintertime temperatures twice as
effectively as glass and other light-transmitting materials.47 Guests visiting the building, then, entered
not a factory, but a tropical paradise that harmonized with the ride’s first scenes. To generate this theme,
Hershey planted 99 varieties of trees and 1,350 flowering plants and shrubs—all tropical—to
complement an indoor waterfall and pond.
48 Executives hoped the sense of authenticity for which guests
yearned could be satiated by shopping alongside live cocoa bean trees. The root of the site’s ostensible
authenticity, however, had shifted from factory operations to a themed retail space. Situated among the
47 “Unique roof produces tropics at Hersheypark,” January 19, 1974, Accession 87006, Box 28, Folder 3, The
Hershey Company Collection, HCA.
48 Hershey Foods Corporation, Press Release, Winter 1973-74, The Hershey Entertainment & Resorts Company
Collection; Corlett, “Hershey’s Will Open New Visitors Center”; Hershey Foods Corporation, “Statistical Brief,” Don
Papson Papers.
Figure 103 – Photo of guests shopping at two roofed, hut-like retail
kiosks located within the tropical arboretum section of Chocolate
World, c. 1973. Photo courtesy of the Hershey Community Archives.

331
exotic plantings were roofed, hut-like kiosks where guests could buy chocolate and dine.
49 In removing its
public relations and marketing face from its site of production, Hershey had given itself a blank canvas
with which to craft a new type of retail operation. The company thereby greatly enhanced its
merchandise, souvenir, and advertising potential through the construction of Chocolate World. The
building remained open on weekends and gradually synergized with park hours to accommodate the
influx of departing tourists as Hersheypark closed each evening. These later hours quickly became the
most lucrative time of day for Chocolate World.50
Chocolate World’s retail space turned the former shortcomings of the company’s cramped and
underequipped visitor’s lobby within the plant into a strength. Not only did the new building provide a
greatly expanded selling area for customers to purchase items, it did so in a themed space that enticed
guests to spend more time there browsing and shopping. By building the site adjacent to Hersheypark’s
entrance and syncing its operating hours with those of the theme park, the company maximized its retail
capabilities. In a report published in 1971 on the economic potentials of the new facility, Economic
Research Associates strongly recommended the company take a more aggressive position with specialty
merchandise and souvenirs. This approach included both chocolate items such giant kisses and fivepound bars, as well as gift items such as recipe books and tote bags bearing the company’s name and
logo. Hershey thus became one of the first corporations in the country, alongside Disney and AnheuserBusch, to capitalize on the sale of “specialty corporate identification souvenirs.”51 These changes made
Chocolate World one of the first corporate visitor centers in the nation—a model that numerous
companies would emulate in the following decades.
49 Corlett, “Hershey’s Will Open New Visitors Center.”
50 Don Papson, phone interview with author, January 20, 2023.
51 Economic Research Associates, “Economic Potentials of Proposed Hershey Tour Facility,” March 14, 1971,
Accession 200706, Box 1, Folder 1, Don Papson Papers, HCA.

332
Chocolate World, however, did not facilitate an immediate retail revolution. Mark Weiner writes
that corporate visitor centers “provide information about a company and its products but differ from
factory tours and museums in their explicit emphasis on marketing consumer goods.”52 While true, this
distinction developed only gradually, and overlooks both the public relations and marketing function of
the original plant tour, as well as the attempts to retain the educational quality of the factory tour in the
simulated ride. In time, Chocolate World would come to resemble a marketplace selling bags of candy, as
well as t-shirts, hats, and myriad other souv