Qualla: Nitro, West Virginia

Nitro, West Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Antony-22, CC BY-SA 4.0. The town of Nitro, West Virginia, was built on purpose, in a hurry, to make gunpowder. In 1918, the U.S. War Department needed an enormous quantity of smokeless powder to feed American artillery on the Western Front. Eighteen hundred acres of cow pasture along the Kanawha River were chosen for the site. The federal government spent $80 million to construct what was called Explosive Plant C - an entire industrial city of barracks, factories, magazines, rail spurs, and worker housing rising out of the farmland in months. The first shipment of powder left the plant in November 1918. The armistice was signed on November 11. The first shipment was also the last. Nitro had been built to feed a war that was over.

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Image: Antony-22 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Nitro, West Virginia: An Instant City for the War

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SuperDalio, CC BY-SA 4.0. Daniel C. Jackling, the copper magnate who had pioneered open-pit mining in Utah, supervised the construction and operation of the Nitro plant. By the armistice, the facility was producing three hundred fifty thousand pounds of smokeless gunpowder per day. The town that supported...

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Image: SuperDalio | CC BY-SA 4.0

Nitro, West Virginia: Chemical Valley

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robert Thompson, CC BY-SA 3.0. The forty-mile stretch of the Kanawha River between Belle and Nitro became known locally and nationally as Chemical Valley. At its peak in the late 1950s and early 1960s, this corridor was the leading chemical-producing region in the world. Union Carbide, Monsanto, FMC, Great Lak...

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Image: Robert Thompson | CC BY-SA 3.0

Nitro, West Virginia: The Long Bill

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit formulanone from Huntsville, United States, CC BY-SA 2.0. The chemical industry left a substantial environmental and public health legacy. The Fike/Artel Chemical Site, on the grounds of the original World War One munitions plant, was placed on the EPA's National Priorities List as a Superfund site in 1983 after decades of unregulated w...

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Image: formulanone from Huntsville, United States | CC BY-SA 2.0

Nitro, West Virginia: Nitro Today

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SuperDalio, CC BY-SA 4.0. The 2020 census recorded a population of 6,618 - down from the 7,178 of 2010 and from the somewhat larger populations of earlier decades. The town now belongs to the Huntington-Ashland metropolitan area. Most of the heavy chemical manufacturing has wound down. The distinctive sme...

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Image: SuperDalio | CC BY-SA 4.0