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PICRIC ACID FARM Contributed by Chris House  |
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The picric acid plant on Clyde Park was begun during WWI, and a substantial amount of construction was completed by the time the war ended. One use of picric acid was as an explosive, and in particular as ammunition explosive, for which it had been used from the 1880's through the end of WWI (1918). It was used extensively in Germany, and in the US it was an alternative to TNT. Presumably the area around the picric acid plant (did it have another name?) was remote at the time since substantial amounts of picric acid would have been produced if the plant had ever gone online. Part of the reason for locating plants like this in places like Michigan and Minnesota was fear of sabotage along the Atlantic coast.
But this was just one of three such plants under construction. The other two were in Brunswick, GA, and Little Rock, AR. None were completed. According to the late Earl Robson, John Winkle, a local farmer, was one of the people that sold his land to the government to make up what would become a 900 acre parcel of land for the project. The land extended on both sides of 44th Street. In total, the acreage was eventual 1,340 acres, or more than two square miles. Stone and Webster, a well known engineering company, supervised construction of the plants. Skilled workers were paid 55-cents an hour, and unskilled workers 37-cents an hour, probably a good wage at the time. Henry Ford made headlines just before WWI by offering workers $5 a day, and a day was probably 9 or 10 hours. The Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad brought about 2,500 construction workers a day to the Fisher Station stop (44th Street), and from there they walked to the plant site. A spur track, now long gone, moved materials to and from the site. It was common to lay temporary tracks during a large construction project. (The area north of 44th Street, by the railroad tracks, was known as Fisher Station. Both it and Home Acres boomed while the picric acid plant construction project existed.) The project apparently elicited a large amount of patriotic fervor, and it was chic at the time for people big and small in the community to roll up their sleeves and pitch in. On Armistice Day, 1918, construction abruptly halted. Railroad service to Fisher Station immediately ceased. Of 25 buildings planned, only a warehouse was substantially completed. In time honored fashion, construction materials were stolen by individuals for housing materials, and by various businesses, a few of which were caught and prosecuted. Efforts to find a commercial use for the site all failed because of politics between Grand Rapids, which feared loss of business control if the surrounding counties became prosperous, and Wyoming. The best opportunity appears to have been an attempt by Henry Ford to obtain the site for a Ford plant of some sort. For whatever detailed reasons, Ford's efforts were thwarted, and the site languished. For a while the warehouse was used to manufacture prefab houses, but around 1950 the building was gutted by fire. No further commercial use was made of the site. Around 1976 the two large towers, which dominated the skyline for almost 60 years, were brought down. The system of caves and bunkers that were to be used to store picric acid, now thought to be safety hazards, were filled in about the same time. Today part of the site is occupied by Palmer Park. Apparently a large system of cypress lined water channels still exists under the ground in parts of the old site. Water from Buck Creek was to be used in the manufacturing process. Apparently the site was a regional playground for children of all ages. There was a great deal of glass and other materials to be smashed, broken, and otherwise used for entertainment. Many sources have said that one "game" entailed building smoky fires in the caves and bunkers, and then seeing who was the last to leave. The health consequences of being a consistent "winner" might have been severe, as just about anything was burned that would make smoke. The towering chimneys located south of 44th Street and west of Clyde Park Avenue were felled by a professional blasting company in January 1976 – removing all traces of the proposed World War I Picric Acid plant which had dominated the Wyoming skyline since 1917. These two smokestacks remained on a parcel of privately owned land long after the conglomeration of concrete pillars and vaults were removed. Children who played there called them by such names as the “Giant’s Table,” “Devil’s Dungeon,” “Dead Man’s Cave,” And “Smokey Bear Cave.” John Winkle was one of the many farmers who sold land of both sides of 44th Street to the government for erection of the plant on the 900-acre site. The plant was to have made high explosives for World War I. Housing for government offices was along 44th Street, and concrete remnants are still to be found behind the 44th Street chapel. The construction of the complex gave work to many area farmers and brought an influx of workers to locate in the vicinity, adding growth to the settlements of Fisher Station, 54th Street and Clay Avenue, and Home Acres, 44th Street, and Division Avenue. Each day, about 1,500 men would ride the train from downtown Grand Rapids to Fisher Station to work on the plant. The plant was to have 25 buildings, but a warehouse was the only thing finished, and this was used as a factory of pre-fabricated homes until it was gutted by fire in 1950, and finally demolished along with the smokestacks. The chimneys were to be used as boilers to make power for the plant, and to force water throughout the property through three-foot cypress tiles, which lie beneath the entire mile of the Picric Acid property. The source of the water was Buck Creek. The Home Acres Fire Department would drill down into these tile lines in the wintertime to get water when Buck Creek was frozen. A commissary was located east of Fisher Station, and a Red Cross building about half a mile south of 44th Street on Clyde Park.
Construction stopped on Armistice Day 1918. There was a celebration march from 44th Street north on Division Ave. to Grand Rapids, with men carrying picks and shovels. Many ideas were proposed for this land. They included a piggery, a poor farm, a summer retreat for tired mothers, and an airport, but none of these materialized. The unfinished towers and pillars remained, except for concrete blocks carted out by ambitious people attempting to build their homes from salvaged material. The area along 44th Street, which had been known as Picric Acid Road, was platted as Urbana Plats #1 and #2 by Service Home Builders, Hoogeboom Construction, and Sterk and Vogel in 1953 and 1954. Flamingo, Illinois and Oriole Court followed in 1955 and 1956. Children from these streets and adjacent areas explored the underground network of caves and climbed atop the mammoth “Giant’s Table” until construction of the Leonard E. Kaufman Golf Course began in early 1960. Huge bulldozing equipment arrived and pushed the concrete into the existing caves, removing all traces of the ghostly statues of 1917. The 380-acre Linus-Palmer Park and the more recent development of new home sites complete the area which had been the government land of the Picric Acid Plant. By Jack Bloom
Two landmarks that have jutted into the Wyoming skyline since 1917, the smokestacks of the World War I picric acid plant, will soon disappear.
Robert Steed, president of Square Deal Real Estate, Inc, confirmed Monday that his firm purchased the 33.43 acre site, south of 44th St. and west of Clyde Park Ave. SW, from Melvin Jelsema and will remove the stacks in developing the tract as an industrial park.
A definite date has not been set for demolition of the stacks, one nearly 200 feet high and other, half that size.
Steed said one stack is in the path of what eventually will be 47th St. when the area is developed into 200x400 foot sites for light industries. The other would be in a lot.
Mrs. Frances Wood, historian for the Wyoming Historical Research Committee that is compiling a Wyoming history, was saddened by the news. She refers to the stacks as “Wyoming’s Calder.”
Mrs. Wood said there was a third stack. But it was dismantled in the late 1930s or early 1940s and vitreous tile blocks used in building houses in the area.
Exactly how the reinforced concrete stacks will be toppled will be decided by Dykema Excavators, contractor on the project, Steed said. He presumed that they would be brought down with dynamite.
Construction of the plant, intended to produce picric acid which was an ingredient of explosives, began in 1917, according to Mrs. Wood, who used be in charge of the Grand Rapids Public Library’s Michigan Room.
The plant was to have been a $5 or $6 million project of more than 25 buildings sprawling over 1,000 acres.
But the Nov 11, 1918, Armistice brought construction to a halt.
Mrs. Wood recalled that construction workers went downtown to celebrate the Armistice. When their jubilation ended, they were jobless.
At one time, the picric acid plant supposedly was destined for the swords-to-plowshares fate of armament plants.
Press files show that it was considered in 1919 as the site of a fertilizer plant, but that conversion apparently never materialized.
Eventually, the plant passed from the…
Grand Rapids Land Association, a group incorporated to develop the site for industries, to Melvin Jelsema, listed on Wyoming city records as a resident of Key Largo, Fla., in 1946.
At that time, only the stacks and a 12,000 square foot powerhouse building remained intact. Some of the unfinished buildings had been razed and the land incorporated into Palmer Park.
Jelsema used the powerhouse as a factory where he assembled components for pre-fabricated houses.
Although the buildings were touted as being fireproof, the powerhouse burned in 1950, but the walls and stacked remained intact.
(Material from various sources, including Dick Speas, class of Godwin 1948, Lewis Lull, class of Godwin 1940, "The City of Wyoming - A History.", and Jack Bloom of the “Grand Rapids Press”.) 
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Fisher Station had 10 businesses in 1974; Heinz pickle factory, Macabee Hall, hotel, general store, boots and shoes, carpenter shop, blacksmith, wagon maker, nurseryman and mill operator. It had two churches, one for the German people and one for the Dutch people. This plat of 208 lots did thrive for a number of years. Fisher Station Groceries and Dry Goods was the last of the buildings to be torn down, and other than the RR tracks, there is no evidence of location left.
