• 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

Related names:

Tennessee Valley Authority

Office of Agricultural and Chemical Development

National Fertilizer Development Center

National Fertilizer and Environmental Research Center

Environmental Research Center

Westinghouse, Church, and Kerr Company

Behrens, Tom, transmitter