Powder City on the Bend

On January 29, 1918, DuPont and the federal government agreed to build a massive smokeless-gunpowder factory, and a town to go with it, along Hadley’s Bend of the Cumberland River northeast of Nashville. The plant, planned with nine units each able to produce 100,000 pounds of powder a day, was then the largest industrial project in Tennessee history, in employees and in scope.

Ground was broken on March 4, 1918. By July 2, powder was already being made — 116 days later, a span DuPont called a world’s record for speed. The company laid out a village first named Jacksonville for Andrew Jackson, with more than 300 permanent dwellings for supervisors and officials and a temporary village of more than 500 residences for laborers. Housing and many public facilities were segregated by race.

Two months after the November 11 armistice, the plant closed. By the end of 1919, a place that had claimed as many as 35,000 to 56,000 workers a year earlier was down to about 500 residents. The village remained.

Full story coming in the first issue of The Old Hickory Citizen.