[St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 23, 1940]
$14,000,000
Government TNT Plant To Have Daily Capacity of 800 Tons
[Handwritten: Oct 23,
1940]
THE government will build a $14,000,000 TNT plant on this
St. Charles County site, it was announced yesterday at Washington. The site,
comprising 20,000 acres, starts at the Daniel Boone Bridge and extends for
about six miles from the Missouri River along new Highway 40-61.
The Weldon
Springs Ordnance Plant, to be built on a 20,000-acre site on the Missouri River
at the Daniel Boone Bridge, in St. Charles County, will have a daily capacity
of 800 tons of DNT and TNT, high explosives used in filling shells.
Announcement
that the War Department had approved the site, at new Highway 40-61 and the
Missouri-Kansas-Texas tracks, was made at Washington yesterday. The land and
the $14,000,000 plant will be owned by the Government but the plant, employing
10,000 men, will be operated by the Atlas Powder Co. of Wilmington, Del.
The
explosives factory, the first large plant of this type authorized west of the
Mississippi under the defense program, will manufacture trinitrotoluene (TNT)
and dinitrotoluene (DNT). Selection of the site was determined largely by the
fact that extensive quantities of raw material, particularly water which is
essential to the manufacture of TNT, was available. Proximity to the St. Louis
labor market was another important factor.
R. Newton
McDowell, a Kansas City contractor who has done extensive work for the
Government, [one or more lines missing]
Col. R. D. Valliant, chief procurement officer of the real
estate section, War Department. McDowell, who conferred with army
representatives at Washington yesterday, said the Government expected to pay a
fair price for the land and desired to satisfy the owners. “However, the
defense program must go forward and the Government has the right to enter
condemnation proceedings and take possession,” McDowell said.
Thomas N.
Dysart, president of the Chamber of Commerce and chairman of the Missouri State
Industrial Commission, said important preliminary work in the selection of the
site was done by Robert Brooks, of the Missouri Highway Commission, and George
C. Smith, of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad. The Highway Commission agreed
to reroute State Route 94, which leads from St. Charles across the site, Dysart
said. A pipeline crossing the land also will be removed and the community of
Hamburg, a town of less than 200 population, will be absorbed in the site.
Under
accepted safety practices all buildings of the explosives fac- [one or more
lines missing]
