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Austin Powder Company
From Brooklyn Centre Wiki
The firm, formerly known as the Cleveland Powder Company, was purchased in 1867 by the Austin brothers of Wilmington, Vermont. The purchase covered 400 acres, some of which would later be the sites of Alcoa Aluminum and ______________. The powder mill was located at the Five Mile Lock on the Ohio Canal. This was where Harvard Road descended down the hill towards Jennings Road.
It was the scene of a powerful explosion in March of 1875. In all, fourteen mills blew up that day.
"...the scene of the fearful catastrophe in [March]. Some thirty or forty tons of powder blew up, shattering windows and injuring walls from five to ten miles distant. It rung a farm bell forty miles off. Was plainly felt near Pittsburgh one hundred miles off, and yet some houses quite near to the disaster were not injured, and people not over two miles south did not hear or know it. The explanation is in the state of the wind and the situation of the mills. The mills are in a ravine, perhaps sixty to eighty feet below the general level of the country. The force of the explosion followed down the ravine to some extent as if fired in that direction. But probably the wind had the most to do with the result. It was a day of fearful wind, gusty and violent so as to make it dangerous to roofs and houses."
--"The Diary and Letters of Rutherford B. Hayes, Nineteenth President of the United States", edited by Charles Richard Williams (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State Archeological and Historical Society, 1922), Chapter 31
