Industry

As the creators and producers of Little Debbie Snack Cakes, O. D. and Ruth McKee transformed a small bakery into a terrific success that their two sons have turned into a business worth $770 million in annual sales. Before the…

This important munitions facility was created in October 1945 by the combination of the Wolf Creek Ordnance Plant and the Milan Ordnance Depot. The combined physical plant of the two installations includes 88 miles of railroad track and 231 miles…

Tennessee has a long, rich, and varied mining history. Although the industry today accounts for only about three-tenths of a percent of the state's gross products and two-tenths of a percent of nonagricultural jobs, Tennessee remains among the national leaders…

Simply stated, "moonshine" is untaxed liquor, furtively produced quite often by the light of the moon, or at least out of the immediate reach and oversight of law enforcement. Nicknamed "corn likker," "white lightening," "white mule," "mountain dew," and numerous…

Commonplace but enduring, the wood-cased pencil industry ventured onto the Tennessee industrial landscape in the first quarter of the twentieth century. The industry took advantage of the state's ubiquitous and prolific red cedar and a recycling scheme that exchanged cedar…

Typically, musseling has been a part-time, seasonal occupation to supplement the income of timber workers, farmers, or fisherman living near Tennessee's great rivers, though it always held the allure of a treasure hunt. Indians of the Woodland Period gathered mussels,…

Arthur J. Dyer, an 1891 graduate of the Vanderbilt Engineering School, founded the Nashville Bridge Company, the state's most productive and important bridge building firm. Dyer worked for a variety of bridge companies over in the 1890s before he borrowed…

Tennessee's tenth largest private employer (2001 figures), the Nissan Motor Manufacturing Corporation, U.S.A., is headquartered in Smyrna. It initially represented the single largest foreign investment by a Japanese corporation anywhere in the world. Led by Marvin Runyon, president and chief…

Constructed in 1933 by the Tennessee Valley Authority to provide housing for the construction workers building Norris Dam, the agency's first hydroelectric project, the town of Norris is listed as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places.…

Norris was the first Tennessee Valley Authority hydroelectric project, begun in October 1933 and finished in March 1936 on the Clinch River in Anderson County. It is a straight concrete gravity-type dam, 1860 feet long, 265 feet high, and 208…

In October 1926 American Bemberg began the manufacture of "artificial silk," or rayon, at its new plant in Elizabethton. The parent company, J. P. Bemberg, was the German affiliate of Vereinigte Glanzstoff Fabriken (VGF), one of the international giants in…

In 1905 horticulturalists officially established the Tennessee Nursery Association for the advancement of the state's horticulture industry and the professionalization of standards. From its very beginning, the founders recognized the potential impact of the nursery industry on the state's economy.…

The town of Old Hickory is a planned industrial complex and community in Davidson County that dates to January 29, 1918, when the DuPont corporation and the federal government agreed to build a massive factory and town along Hadley's Bend…

The Patterson Forge, the site of which is now preserved at the Narrows of the Harpeth State Historical Area, was constructed at the neck of an unusual bend of the Harpeth River where, after approximately four miles, the stream channel…

Mary McKeehan Patton, pioneer gunpowder manufacturer, was born in England in 1751 and immigrated with her family to Pennsylvania in the late 1760s. McKeehan served an apprenticeship, possibly under her father, David McKeehan, and learned the art of gunpowder making.…

In 1886 William Shirley, a stonecutter, discovered phosphate on Gholston Hill near Columbia. This deposit proved to be too limited to be mined economically. In 1891 Shirley found a stratified blue rock deposit around Knob Creek, north of Columbia. A…

Within a year of his birth in 1892 in Tupelo, Mississippi, Abe Plough moved with his family to Memphis, where his father Moses operated a clothing and furnishings store. Abe Plough attended Market Street School where a teacher taught him…

The only remaining dairy in Davidson County, Purity Dairy was established in 1926 as Ezell's Dairy by Miles Ezell Sr. with eighty rented cows, a rented farm, and rented equipment. With quality products, hard work, and tenacity, the Ezells transformed…

Julius E. Raht, pioneer in the mining and smelting of copper in East Tennessee, was born in Dillenburg, Duchy of Nassau, Germany, on June 26, 1826. He attended Bonn University and the University of Berlin before immigrating to the United…

Located in Marion County, Richard City is significant for its associations with the development of industrial company towns in Tennessee in the early twentieth century. In the early 1900s, representatives of the Dixie Portland Company, including engineer Ellis Soper, cement…