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    Hercules
    Hercules
    Hercules
    Ebook202 pages1 hour

    Hercules

    By Jennifer Posedel, Stephen Lawton and Hercules Historical Society

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    About this ebook

    The history of explosives manufacturing in Hercules began in 1879, when the California Powder Works acquired a site on San Pablo Bay, 20 miles northeast of San Francisco. The powder works, subsequently owned by Dupont and the Hercules Powder Company, produced one of the first internationally branded products: Hercules dynamite. It became the world’s leading producer of TNT during World War I. The town of Hercules was incorporated in 1900, and for nearly 75 years its population remained under 300. The company-owned village had no retail district, but its employee clubhouse was the anchor for the city’s social life. After the explosives plant closed, buildings comprising a small historic district were restored, while a diverse residential suburb grew rapidly around it. Hercules chronicles the city’s industrial past and a vanishing way of life.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439624258
    Hercules
    Author

    Jennifer Posedel

    Jennifer Posedel’s (née Dowling) previous books include Rodeo and Theatres of Oakland. Stephen Lawton is a past board member of the Contra Costa County Historical Society and is chair of the Contra Costa County Historical Landmarks Advisory Committee. They collaborated with the Hercules Historical Society, using images from corporate archives and the family albums of former company personnel. The authors’ royalties from the sale of each book will benefit the Hercules Historical Society.

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      Book preview

      Hercules - Jennifer Posedel

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      INTRODUCTION

      Hercules is the name of a settled place occupying the watershed of Refugio Creek, in Contra Costa, California. Hercules was also the name of a hero in Greek mythology and the brand name of an industrial product, dynamite. How this name and this place came together unfolds an important story of the global Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. It is also the earliest story of California-born technological innovation. Hercules, California, is therefore a place of significance in mankind’s mastery of energy, particularly the energy of chemical explosives, which is fundamental to every aspect of our lives today.

      The story of explosives begins with black powder, used by the world’s major civilizations for six centuries. Until about 1840, it was the only known explosive substance. Production of this mixture of potassium nitrate (as saltpeter), sulfur, and carbon (as charcoal) is straightforward and moderately dangerous. Raw materials are pulverized and mixed. The resulting mixture is then rolled or pressed into cakes. The cakes are broken into grains for final polishing, drying, and blending for specific applications, such as blasting or munitions. For safety, production was in small batches, typically located close to the points of use. Rudimentary black powder mills, operated by hardy proprietors, served local markets such as a mining district or a munitions factory. With neither economies of scale nor incentives for innovation, explosives manufacture was a pre-industrial enterprise.

      The 1849 California Gold Rush was also a pre-industrial enterprise. Thousands of miners blasted away at the Sierra foothills, and railroad men began carving out graded routes. California, still a remote outpost, became an important new market for black blasting powder.

      California’s miners and railroad builders needed increasing supplies of black powder at affordable prices. For a time, demand was satisfied with seaborne shipments from the powder mills of the eastern United States and Europe. However, by the late 1850s the eastern mills shifted production to the military in anticipation of the Civil War. As the Union and Confederacy plunged into war, black powder became a strategic material and shipments were embargoed. Californians grew desperate for their vital black blasting powder. In October 1863, the collector of the Port of San Francisco telegraphed the secretary of war in Washington, DC, that unless powder was sent promptly, the Union would receive no more California gold.

      John H. Baird, a forty-niner from Kentucky, saw the opportunity to produce black powder in California. In 1861 he led a group of investors to raise capital of $100,000 and incorporate the California Powder Works. A suitable site was selected on the San Lorenzo River, outside Santa Cruz, near a paper mill. With ample waterpower and forests for construction timber and charcoal, the site was separated from the town but enjoyed access to a wharf in the Santa Cruz harbor.

      By 1864, with factory equipment procured from the East, the first black powder mill in the West was in operation. It relied on Chinese laborers and saltpeter shipped from India (and later nitrate of soda from Chile). Employing up to 275 workmen, the California Powder Works was for many years the principal industry of Santa Cruz and the sole source of black powder in California. But after only four years, it faced a formidable competitor possessing a new chemical technology.

      Nitroglycerine, a chemical compound, was the first high explosive that explodes by detonation instead of burning. Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero discovered this unstable, sensitive liquid in the 1840s. Production requires mixing glycerin into a blend of nitric and sulfuric acids. The mixing operation produces heat, which can cause a runaway explosive reaction if not controlled. Special acid-resistant vessels, often fashioned from lead, are required to handle the corrosive acids.

      Nitroglycerine can produce explosive velocities many thousands of times greater than black powder. Despite Sobrero’s warnings, harnessing the power of nitroglycerine was an irresistible challenge for men of vision and industry willing to risk death. By the 1860s, nitroglycerine had moved from scientific curiosity to a new technology.

      Charles Crocker, one of the Big Four owners of the Central Pacific Railroad, brought the power of nitroglycerine to California. He had taken on the greatest engineering challenge of the century. Beginning in 1863, he marshaled the men, money, and equipment to build the transcontinental railroad eastward from Sacramento. By early 1867, more than 10,000 Chinese laborers were at the difficult and dangerous work of digging, blasting, and grading the route. But at the summit, Crocker’s men fell behind schedule. Using black powder, the Chinese could advance the face of Tunnel Number Six through the solid granite at a rate of only 1.18 feet per day. The success of the entire enterprise hinged on completing the 1,659-foot tunnel that year.

      Crocker brought English chemist James Howden to the tunnel site. Howden set up a simple nitroglycerine factory, using an old kettle beneath a shed roof supported by four posts. Mixing the chemicals, he worked alone, surrounded by red flags. He taught the Chinese how to handle and use nitroglycerine for blasting. In November, the first train rolled through the summit tunnel.

      That same year, Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel obtained the first of many patents showing how nitroglycerine could be tamed for practical use by impregnating it in clay or other material, known as dope. This new product, dynamite, was versatile, reliable, and relatively safe to transport. Unlike black powder, dynamite was a patented chemical product. Because dynamite production required scientific understanding, technical expertise, and capital investment in large, sophisticated factories, it was to call forth one of the earliest recognizably modern industries.

      The American cradle of this new industry was to be San Francisco. In 1868, Nobel sold the exclusive US patent for the manufacture and sale of dynamite to the Giant Powder Company, which immediately constructed the first American commercial dynamite factory in San Francisco’s Rock House Canyon, now Glen Park. It was destroyed in an 1869 explosion. Operations soon recommenced on a 100-acre site in the sand dunes south of Golden Gate Park.

      The men of California Powder Works immediately saw the competitive threat to their black powder business. They needed a product to compete with Giant’s Nobel-patented dynamite. In 1869, with the transcontinental railroad completed, James Howden returned to San Francisco with a reputation as one of its best chemists. Funded by California Powder Works, he proceeded to set up a nitroglycerine factory on a site

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