United States Nitrate Plant No. 2, Reservation Road, Muscle Shoals, Muscle Shoals, Colbert County, AL

Significance: Production of Ammonium Nitrate. / Built as a war measure for the production of ammonium nitrate, a key component in high explosives, U.S.N.P. No. 2 became one of the largest plants of its kind with a capacity to produce 110,000 tons of ammonium nitrate per year. The plant and its adjoining industrial town were hurriedly constructed in a nine month period between February and November of 1918 with little regard to cost. After two brief periods of production, one toward the end of 1918, the other in the February of 1919, the 348 acre manufacturing site lay idle for the next fourteen years while Congress and private industry wrangled over bids that had less to do with the nitrate plant than they did with the hydro-power of the adjoining Wilson Dam.

Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N162

Survey number: HAER AL-46

Building/structure dates: 1918 Initial Construction

chemical plants experimental stations and agricultural research muscle shoals ala reservation road muscle shoals muscle shoals colbert colbert county alabama united states nitrate plant tom behrens environmental research center historic american engineering record national fertilizer and environmental research center national fertilizer development center office of agricultural and chemical development tennessee valley authority church westinghouse states nitrate plant ultra high resolution high resolution power plants hydro plant manufacturing plants building church buildings manufacturing library of congress nitrate plant

1969 - 1980

Library of Congress

http://www.loc.gov/

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