This Midwestern munitions plant became active to serve the exploding demand of the US armed forces during World War II. Dozens of miles of railroad tracks crossed the massive plant connecting bunkers, factories, warehouses, worker housing, and shipping connections.
The photo above and below this text are remnants of a system to carry cotton bales from the Cotton Dry House to the Nitrating House. There, the cotton was soaked in a chemical solution of nitric and sulfuric acid to make it explosive as part of the munitions manufacturing process.
A combination of Christmas day and wet, heavy sleet falling from the sky at 33º kept the sprawling site quiet as I explored for hours. The powder pack houses shown here were spaced well apart to mitigate the danger of a chain of explosions if one blew up. Other precautions involved searching workers for matches or lighters and requiring conductive shoes to reduce static electricity.
Buildings were built with thick brick walls and sheet metal roofs so in the event of an explosion, the blast would go up as opposed to horizontally towards adjacent buildings.
The second of two massive silver mines in the Utah mountains.
Closed in the 1990’s this base contains haunting reminders of who used to live, work, train, and grow up on the base. Torn apart by scrappers and smashed by vandals, the base is slowly slipping back to the desert with tumbleweeds piled up 10 ft high against some of the houses.
