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Troubled explosives industry boomed
Just outside of Point Pinole Regional Park, two roads come together at right angles. Giant Road heads
south to San Pablo and eventually
curves and changes its name to
Brbokside Avenue. Atlas Road goes
east toward Pinole, but never quite
makes it.
Those two names, Giant and Atlas, are about the only visible remains of the explosive industries
that once made their homes in Point
Pinole.
The history of the explosives industry in California is a story of
manufacturers trying to find places
to make their products without
blowing up adjacent communities.
And so it was that in the late 1800s
the northwestern corner of Contra
Costa County became the ideal
spot to make dynamite.
Julius Bandmann, a well-educated 25-year-old German immigrant,
came to California in 1850 when the
Gold Rush was at its peak. But instead of making his fortune digging
for gold, he got in the business of
selling mining equipment, including
black powder, to gold miners. His
partner was Henry Nielsen, a young
Swede.
Bandmann had left a brother
back home in Hamburg, Dr. Christian Bandmann, who apparently had
some cash to spare and invested it
in a partnership with Alfred Nobel.
Nobel suffered from angina and
took nitroglycerin pills to ward off
heart attacks. He became fascinated with the explosive qualities of
nitroglycerin even though the scientific community had written the substance off as too unstable. Nobel,
however, devised a detonating device, a percussion cap, which could
be used to explode the nitroglycerin
under controlled conditions.
Nobel secured patents for the device in 1863 and 1864 and formed a
company to manufacture nitroglycerin, which he called "blasting
oil." Nobel's business was so prosperous from the beginning that he
opened a second plant in Germany
in 1865. He found two financial
backers, Dr. Bandmann and Theodore Winckler, a Swedish merchant.
DAYS GONE BY
By Nilda Rego
Times correspondent
Dr. Bandmann wrote his brother,
Julius, in California to tell him that
he too was in the explosives business. Christian Bandmann suggested his brother add the "blasting oil"
to his line of mining supplies.
Tragedy strikes
In April 1866 the S.S. Europe,
carrying 70 cases of nitroglycerin
for the firm of Bandmann and Nielsen, blew up on the Atlantic side of
the Isthmus of Panama. Sixty people were killed. A few weeks latr an
unlabeled case of nitroglycerin destined for Los Angeles blew up in the
courtyard of the Wells Fargo Company when four men tried to open it
up with a chisel and hammer to find
out what was inside.
The two nasty explosions galvanized the governments of both Europe and the United States. Laws
were passed on both sides of
the Atlantic prohibiting the shipment of nitroglycerin.
Just when it looked as if Bandmann and Nielsen were going to be
put out of business, Nobel came
through with another invention, a
"safety powder" better known as
dynamite.
Julius and his partner decided
that it would be better to manufacture the dynamite in California rather than waiting for foreign shipments. They obtained permission
from brother Christian to apply for
patents in the United States, but unfortunately did not get official permission from Nobel himself.
Bandmann and Nielsen formed a
new company, the Giant Powder
Co., and then built the first dynamite factory in the United States in
Rock House Gulch in San Francisco's Mission District. By February
1868, they had made their first 10
pounds of dynamite, which
they tested by blasting a 42-pound
cannon ball 100 yards into San
Francisco Bay. In March the partners had their first commercial run,
making 1,300 pounds of explosives
in a two-week period.
But tragedy was on its way. In
November 1869 the Giant Powder
Co. factory blew up, killing two people. The partners then bought 25
acres of sand dunes south of what
became Golden Gate Park. In spite
of the setback, the business grew
and was soon producing 2,000
pounds of dynamite a day and still
not keeping up with demand.
It was about this time that Gen.
Henry DuPont and his company, the
California Powder Works, joined
other members of the explosives industry to try to wrench the exclusive patent to manufacture dynamite from the Giant Powder Co.
DuPont was successful. The United
States voided the patent and all the
companies in the explosives industry rushed to build dynamite plants.
Manufacturers cross Bay
The Giant Powder Co. was able
to stay on its sand dunes for 10
years, but on Jan. 14, 1879, an explosion hit the plant, followed by
another one three months later. The
company was forced to move to the
East Bay, where they located their
plant on what later became Golden
Gate Fields in Albany. The plant at
the new location blew up in
1883, 1886, and in 1887.
In 1892 came the biggest blast of
all. It was described as the "greatest
dynamite explosion which has ever
occurred in the United States,"
by the San Francisco Call.
The contents of two magazines
containing 230,000 pounds of dynamite exploded. The blast was felt as
far away as Sacramento and windows were shattered all over the
East Bay, causing $25,000 in damage. San Francisco newspapers gave first casualty figures ranging from 40 to 180 people.
The scene of the blast soon became a tourist attraction. The
Southern Pacific put on a special
train running every half-hour from
the ferry to the explosion site. The
trains carried some 10,000 sightseers.
The 1892 explosion caused the
powder company to move again.
This time Bandmann merged his
company with the Safety Nitro Powder Co., which had been operating
at Point Pinole since 1881. The new
company was called the Giant Powder Company Consolidated.
Moving did not stop the explosions. But the explosives manufac-
turing plant at Point Pinole was so
isolated that it was able to operate for 68 years as the Giant Powder
Co. and later as Atlas Powder.
Nilda Rego's Days Gone By appears
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