American Powder Mills

American Powder Mills was a Massachusetts gunpowder manufacturing complex on the Assabet River. It expanded to include forty buildings along both sides of the river in the towns of Acton, Concord, Maynard, and Sudbury. Press mills, kernelling mills, glazing mills, and storehouses were dispersed over four-hundred acres to minimize damage during infrequent explosions. A narrow gauge railway transferred raw materials and products between the buildings.^[1]

History

Nathan Pratt purchased a mill pond dam on the Assabet River and converted the former sawmill to production of gunpowder in 1835. Pratt sold the mill to the American Powder Company in 1864.^[1] In 1872 American Powder Company formed the United States Gunpowder Trade Association, popularly known as the powder trust, with Austin Powder Company, DuPont, Hazard Powder Company, Laflin & Rand Powder Company, Miami Powder Company, and Oriental Powder Company.^[2] American Powder Company reorganized as American Powder Mills in 1883 with business offices in Boston.^[1]

The first explosion killed four men in 1836. Henry David Thoreau's journal records his observations of an explosion killing three men in 1853. Five men were killed in a series of explosions on 3 May 1898. While the plant was manufacturing gunpowder for the Russian Empire during World War I a 4 September 1915 explosion was heard as far away as Lowell and Boston. The facility was sold to American Cyanamid in 1929. The last three explosions in 1940 ended gunpowder production, and the property passed into W. R. Grace and Company ownership. The Assabet River dam at the original mill pond site generated hydroelectricity for municipal Concord into the 21st-century.^[1]

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