Gopher Ordnance Works

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Gopher Ordnance Works was located off of County Road 46 near Coates and Rosemount, Minnesota. It was first opened in 1943 as a gunpowder production plant. The plant was closed soon after the end of World War II. There are some remains still at the original site which is visible from Highway 52 and County Road 46.

1 A location is chosen
2 General Plant Information
3 Advertising
4 External links
5 Source

[edit] A location is chosen

After the government decided it needed a place to open up another gunpowder factory, they chose Dakota County in East Central Minnesota as their prime spot to put up such a factory, specifically, the city of Rosemount. They soon evicted farmers on 11,000 acres (45 km²) of farmland so that they could build Gopher Ordnance Works, which consisted of 858 buildings.

[edit] General Plant Information

Gopher Ordnance could hold approximately 3,000 employees, however, most of the employees were not hired off site and had already worked in the defense industry. The plant was operated by DuPont. The production lines at Gopher were completed in 1943 and idled until 1944 when the government requested the plant begin production and create three additional production lines. The gunpowder being produced at the plant was being used for navy artillery shells. The smokestacks were for boiling water that was used to manufacture the gunpowder. The large T-Walls were part of solvent recovery houses. The process involved lots of volatile material.

The grounds of Gopher Ordnance are still polluted with numerous byproducts of the gunpowder production process, even 60 years after the plant closed. It has been discussed as a possible SuperFund site.^[1]

[edit] Advertising

The plant was unable to get employees easily, so it ran ads in local newspapers. One such ad pictured a female saying, "If you can run a vacuum cleaner, you can do my war job at Gopher".