Saltville, part 1
a memorial to an industrial disaster
Our sister Martha was the family historian. She researched the family tree as far back as old letters and online records could take her. One roadblock was the incomplete or inconclusive records of our Irish ancestors. Still she managed to produce summaries of her research in the form of eight essays, one for each of our great-grandparents.
One of the eight essays was about our mom’s grandfather on her dad’s side: James Henry MacMahon, born in New York City in 1861. Records indicate that the family moved, at the outbreak of the Civil War, to Widnes, an industrial town on the Mersey River upstream from Liverpool. Martha’s essay describes the town and the early decades of chemical engineering:
Widnes, it turns out, was a sort of early hotspot for the British chemical industry, prompted by the need for affordable, abundant supplies of sodium hydroxide (caustic soda) and other alkalis. Alkalis were needed in the glass, textile, soap, and paper industries, many of which were located along the Mersey River with convenient access to shipping out of Liverpool.
The early manufacturing processes generated huge amounts of polluting waste, often in greater quantities than the product itself. Industrial chemistry had little academic or theoretical basis at the time, being more a sort of craft being carried out using processes discovered by trial and error.
My great-grandfather James Henry MacMahon seemed particularly adept at the nascent profession of chemical engineering. Between 1911 and 1925 he received 21 patents for various chemical processes. As Martha summarizes, “He had a sort of genius for improving production strategies and inventing improved equipment to reduce waste, spend less on materials, and gain various other efficiencies.”
So it made sense that his employer, Mathieson Alkali Works, would send “Jim” MacMahon to Niagara Falls in 1898 to set up and manage their new plant. Then around 1920 they sent him to Saltville, Virginia as the general manager. He and his wife Margaret Hewitt made Saltville their home for two years, after which time he was called back to Niagara Falls to continue his process improvements and to explore patentable concepts.
In November 2023, Martha and her husband Dave drove south from their home in Nova Scotia — Dave to visit his sister in Northern Virginia; Martha to visit my home in Silver Spring, then to continue on south to Spruce Pine, North Carolina to spend the week around Thanksgiving with her daughter Florence.
Martha and I decided to make the trek together. We did not know at the time, of course, that this would be our final trip together. The following spring her health would decline precipitously, and she would pass away that summer. But at the time we were just happy to be together. We took serendipitous side trips — driving through Bristol, Tennessee to buy a particular set of strings for her Martin guitar, visiting the scenic overlooks on the Blue Ridge Parkway with Florence, and exploring the nearby geologic museum. Throughout our 760 mile road trip — to Spruce Pine and back to Charlottesville, Virginia to visit my daughter Molly — we would cover various topics, whatever came to our minds, then sit in comfortable silence, then talk some more.
On her bucket list was to visit Saltville. Leaving Spruce Pine, we headed north on Interstate 81 and found our way across the broad landscape and into the rounded hills toward the mountains and the valley of the North Fork of the Holston River.
We entered the quiet community on a road lined with company housing built in the heyday of industrial development, and parked downtown to visit The Museum of the Middle Appalachians (“From the Ice Age to the Space Age”).
Ever the researcher, Martha sought to get her historical bearings and gather data. Apparently, this area was eons ago an inland ocean — with ancient salt brine deposits having been pumped for several centuries to the surface and evaporated leaving salt as a residue. Saltville was “The Salt Capital of the Confederacy” during the Civil War — providing salt for preserving meat for the troops — and was protected by a garrison.
Mathieson Alkali set up shop in the early 1890s and Saltville developed into an industrial company town. This was back in the days when the social contract between the corporation and the worker was robust. Mathieson provided housing for workers. If a window broke, the company fixed it. If a home needed coal, the company brought it. Groceries were delivered by horse and dray.
Provisions were available from the company store — everything from food to hardware to textiles. The corporation helped fund the schools and attracted high quality teachers and coaches. The school system was one of the best in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and their sports teams were (and continue to be) the pride of the community.
Even 100 years ago, the monolithic influence of industry dominated the physical and sociological landscape. Mathieson Alkali Works had all the resources they needed to thrive as a business — rich deposits of salt, convenient proximity to limestone, a skilled and loyal workforce, and water.
Before there were railway lines, the North Fork of the Holston River served as a means of transporting finished products downstream. The river was a source of water for production of ammonia-soda, and a convenient method of disposal of chemical waste products. The worst of the toxic contaminants were pumped into a holding pond, what became known as a “muck dam.”
In recounting this unfortunate by-product of industrialization, Carl V. Eskridge, a local writer, put it this way:
An undesirable feature of the muck and the other wastes is that it often spoils springs, and the drinking water of stock along the river course. Besides, it kills fish in the stream for many miles. These things have caused several lawsuits between M.A.W. [Mathieson Alkali Works] and the property holders along the Holston Valley. The courts have, in every case, given the decision in favor of the Alkali Company, maintaining that the disposal of the water is an individual necessity.
By the 1920s, this muck dam, as it came to be known, covered 30 acres behind a wall a half mile long adjacent to the river The wall, being nothing more than the dried contents of the dam, rose 100 feet above the surrounding communities of Palmertown, Chinch Row, and Henrytown.
In The Museum of the Middle Appalachians, Martha and I listened to our kind and informative docent, a resident of Saltville. We were standing by a massive scale model of the valley, following the curve of the Holsten past the chemical plant, the location of the muck dam and the towns that dotted the valley as she told us about the Muck Dam Disaster.
On the cold and rainy darkness of Christmas Eve 1924, the muck dam failed, inundating the area with an ocean of caustic sludge. The force of the toxic flow crushed houses, uprooted trees, injured scores of people and took the lives of nineteen residents of Palmertown, eleven of them children.
It’s a tragic story, the worst chemical accident in Smyth County’s history. Men of the town courageously mobilized search and rescue efforts throughout the night. In subsequent weeks and months the corporation rebuilt and compensated for structural losses. The town revived itself. The muck dam was rebuilt. Olin Chemical Corporation bought Mathieson in 1954. Operations of all the plants closed February 29, 1972 and Saltville had to recover again, this time from the loss of employment and the steady hand of the corporation.
“The chemical company did some nasty stuff,” said our docent with gentle candor. We had already identified ourselves — somewhat apologetically — as descendants of a Mathieson manager. On our way out, she mentioned that Christmas Eve next year would be the 100th anniversary of the disaster and a committee was planning to dedicate a memorial in the Town Commons. Martha and I subsequently donated to the memorial online — in my case out of equal measures of reverence and some sense of hereditary culpability.
Martha and I would spend this last day together, traveling to Charlottesville to have dinner at Molly’s, after which the two women traded old-time tunes on guitar and fiddle.
Five months after she died, I drove back to Spruce Pine to visit Florence. On my way back home I took the hour detour to the Saltville commons to see the memorial.
Thirty years later, Olin was struggling to keep the business viable. The plant manager in the early 1960s, an L. D. Bradt, made this declaration on the competing goals of financial viability and the environmental impact of Olin’s activities:
There is no known reasonable solution to the industrial-waste problem because of the cost.
“Because of the cost.”
See you next week for Saltville, part 2.
Notes:
Eskridge, Carl V. The Great Saltville Disaster. Bristol, TN. King Printing Company, 1925.
Turnage, Martha A. Company Town Shutdown. Annapolis, MD. Berwick Publishing, 1994.
Martin-Gross, Kalen. Saltville Muck Dam Collapse. Clio: Your Guide to History. March 28, 2019. https://theclio.com/entry/77037
https://museumofthemiddleappalachians.org
https://www.morrellmusic.com — the fabulous music store in Bristol, Tennessee
What a touching and sobering story, Stew, not least that it was your last road trip with your sister. Looking at that memorial -- the names and ages of the little ones who never got the chance to live much of a life, the families who lost so many at once -- is gut wrenching.
I particularly appreciated how you wove in subtle commentary about the prices we've paid for "progress." Even back in the days when the social contract was robust.
You write: The town revived itself. The muck dam was rebuilt. Olin Chemical Corporation bought Mathieson in 1954. Operations of all the plants closed February 29, 1972 and Saltville had to recover again, this time from the loss of employment and the steady hand of the corporation.”
The social contract only ever extended to the point of affordability. The same is true today, though affordability now factors in the expectation that shareholders and executives will reap returns far greater in comparison to what is given to employees. Thus, the social contract, as it were, is more or less gone. When something gives (the muck dam is a suitable metaphor) it is always at the expense of the commoners.