HERCULES POWDER STORE & CLUB HATTIESBURG MS " Hercules Employees Store And Club Room, Hattiesburg, Miss " Printed color photo of the building. Divided back Post Card mailed with a Camp Shelby Miss Postmark dated 1943 " Published by " D. E. Levine News Agency, Hattiesburg, Miss " Condition: Clean, no damage. Minor rounding to the corners. Does not distract. [from http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=452977034 Seller: deals2go]

 

California Powder Works When the American Industrial Revolution began in the 1800's, California Powder Works joined the ranks and started a company on the West Coast. What began as a California Powder Works plant site on the shores of San Pablo Bay grew into the company town of Hercules which thrived through one hundred years, three transferals of ownership, and five wars. The history of California Powder Works started when its first plant was established near Santa Cruz, California, in 1861. In the business of making black powder, a highly explosive substance, California Powder Works prospered and provided fierce competition for the other West Coast explosive firms. In 1868, they began producing dynamite. In 1869, California Powder Works established a dynamite plant in San Francisco in the same area that is now Golden Gate Park. As San Francisco developed and the populace moved closer to the plant, the dangerous business of producing explosives proved undesirable and California Powder Works was forced to find a new location. In 1879, the Powder Works began purchasing land on the isolated shores of San Pablo Bay. The plant was constructed in two years and finally, in 1881, started producing dynamite. For safety purposes, the building were constructed in a series of gullies and ravines. The Hercules plant did not start manufacturing black powder until 1893, when the entire Santa Cruz plant and works moved north to reestablish in Hercules. From 1881, when California Powder Works began operation in Hercules, until 1919, 59 lives were taken by explosions. The majority of the devastating blasts happened in the nitroglycerin house and the building in which the dynamite was produced. The most disastrous explosion occurred in February, 1908, when 24 men were killed in a single explosion. The name Hercules comes from a potent and explosive black powder first made in California Powder Works' Santa Cruz plant. The Company named their product after Hercules, the Greek mythological hero known for his strength, in order to signify how powerful their black powder was. [from http://www.ci.hercules.ca.us/cityfact/History.htm]