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 "On March 10, 1918,"
wrote historian Dixon Merritt, "Hadley's Bend was a little
neighborhood of half a score of farms-- a sedate, slow-moving, old
fashioned and somewhat aristocratic cluster of country
families. On November 11 of that year, the day the World War
Armistice was signed, the area was capable of housing and caring
for a population of 100,000. A plant, city, railroad,
highways and streets, water system, what not - - all had been
constructed in eight months and a day."
At the root of it all was the plant - - a
smokeless powder factory that in its few months of operation was
the largest of its kind in the world.
Hadley's Bend was changed almost overnight when
the U.S. Government bought 5,600 acres, at an average price of
$105 per acre, to build the plant. The Government needed
smokeless powder - - lots of it - -for the armies on the Western
Front, and in January 1918 DuPont contracted with the Government
to build and run the plant in the Bend.
The new railroad brought in thousands of workers
to build the facility. One train was reserved exclusively
for women and was called the "Powder Puff
Special." The "DuPont Powder Puff," in fact,
was the name of a popular song at the plant::
"We're in the War, right in the game,
We're fighting with our men,
We back the chaps who're at the front,
From dear old Nashville, Tenn,
Old Hickory plant is working nights,
To make the real stuff
To paste upon the Kaiser's nose
a DuPont Powder Puff."
At the height of the construction, it was
estimated that 300 carloads of material came into Old Hickory (or
Jacksonville, as it was known at this time) each day and there
were as many as 30,000 employees on roll. The plant, though
nowhere near complete, was producing 700,000 pounds of smokeless
powder per day when the Armistice was signed.
Of course, when the war ended the powder was no
longer needed and the plant closed. DuPont left Old Hickory,
selling the property to the Nashville Industrial Corp., a group of
Nashville businessmen.
With no reason to stay, the people moved out of
the Bend. As quickly as it had appeared, the community was
transformed into a "ghost town".
Return to Top
Taken from,
"Our Old Hickory Heritage", a DuPont publication.
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