When the War Department went looking for a place inland that was secure in which to locate a Chemical Warfare Arsenal, the Marion Chamber of Commerce made every effort to get them to relocate here. Fortunately for us, we didn’t get the plant.
In 1936, the government had already purchased 22,000 acres along Crab Orchard Creek under the Resettlement Administration which became known as the Crab Orchard Creek Project. By 1939 Keller Lake, as it was called then, was being built as a WPA project. Most of this land had already been seriously over farmed and stripped of its original forests leaving badly depleted land behind.
A trio of lakes was planned for recreational and industrial use, including Crab Orchard, Little Grassy and Devil’s Kitchen. Crab Orchard was originally designated Keller Lake. Kent Keller was the congressman who sponsored the initial project.
On August 1, 1941, prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor and before our entry into the war, local newspapers were announcing that the U.S. War Department would be locating an arms plant here. Crab Orchard Lake was already completed and the government purchased another 12,000 acres on the east side of the lake and development of the Illinois Ordnance Plant, Ordill for short, was begun.
The original estimate on the plant was that it would cost $40,000,000 to build and would employ 7,000 people.
An article in the Marion Daily Republican on August 26th announced that they planned to build 120 miles of road inside the munitions area. The final design of the Ordnance Plant was scattered over 22,000 acres and circled the entire east end of Crab Orchard Lake. This development included 14 different areas which ranged in size from 40 to 640 or more acres. Construction began by the end of August 1941.
To make the plant self-contained, a power plant, telephone office, sewage treatment plant, water treatment plant, administration building, cafeterias, ammunition bunkers, storage buildings, housing and three production line plants were built. The plant was also complete with its own fire and police departments and employed 400 firemen and 900 policemen as security guards. The Administration building was built near the entrance to Ordill which was then old Route 13.
Within only a few months, Ordill consisted of over 500 buildings scattered over 22,000 acres around the lake. Of these, 300 buildings had 1,500,000 square feet of floor space. It was ringed with over 50 miles of barbed wire fence and guard posts. Ordill had 120 miles of road and numerous railroad spurs feeding raw materials into the plant production lines and manufactured shells and bombs out of the plant.
To oversee management of the operation of the plant, Sherwin-Williams Paint Company out of St. Louis was contracted. This company was thought to have the necessary know how to mix chemicals and set up production lines. They operated out of an office in Carbondale, Illinois.
An employment office set up in Marion, Illinois took applications for the new plant. Originally, the Hampton building in Marion was used as an employment office, but due to traffic issues, was later shifted to 608 N. Market St. and still drew complaints from local merchants about parking issues due to the enormous number of people applying for jobs.
There were likely as many women working here as there were men since, once the war started, the men’s numbers would dwindle. The women had to be between 18 and 40 years old and were typically paid .75 cents per hour. This was the first opportunity most of them had to work at any job. There were no raises throughout the war. All workers were encouraged to invest their paychecks in War Bonds, which were sold on site.
Workers were not allowed to carry in matches, lighters or wrist watches from fear of sparks, though many workers were known to smoke outside the buildings.
Ironically, housing turned out to be a shortage and a number of committees were set up in neighboring towns that listed anyone who had rooms or housing to rent to the workers. Some came in and lived in travel trailers or rented space wherever they could find it.
By December 4, 1941, only three days before Pearl Harbor, there were already 7,000 people employed and the plant was paying out a payroll of $314,000 weekly to local citizens. By the end of the month, there were 10,000 people employed with a weekly payroll of $500,000.
The plant was set up with three major production lines. Long buildings were arranged end to end so that the product could roll right from one building and into the next. The three plants produced 105 MM shells, 155 MM shells and 500 pound bombs. At peak wartime production, 10,000 workers were outputting 250,000 105 MM shells, 175,000 155 MM shells and 70,150 500 pound bombs on a monthly basis. The shells were loaded into railroad cars and freighted out or put into bunker storage till they could be shipped later.
When WWII was over on VJ (Victory over Japan) Day, August 14, 1945, the plant was closed immediately.
After the war was over and the plant was closed, a department of government called the War Assets Administration was responsible for the disposal of war time assets, including the plant. Attempts to sell the Ordill property for $500,000 proved ineffective as the property was too large to sell in one bundle.
A group of Southern Illinois business men, had the foresight to know that one city could not fend for themselves as well as a consortium could, so they formed Southern Illinois Incorporated and lobbied the WAA to rent buildings out for commercial use. In this way, not only would the government get some of their money back but the local economy which was now dealing with the loss of 10,000 jobs and facing returning G.I.’s would benefit as well. This was written up in the October 26th, 1946 Issue of Business Week magazine.
The ploy worked and Sangamo Electric Company took 53,000 sq. ft. for its condenser manufacturing division and employed 500 people. Smoler Brothers, a Chicago dress manufacturer, used 10,000 sq. ft. in a pilot operation to train workers until their plant at neighboring Herrin, Illinois was completed.
Other tenants were a furniture company, two Chicago manufacturers of condensers and transformers, and a commercial blue printer.
Later, many of the buildings were occupied by another ammunition manufacturer named Olin-Mathieson which remained there for 2 or 3 decades. After they left, one of the production lines was utilized by General Dynamics, which is still there today. This company also maintains a test firing facility located west of Kokapeli on Skyline Drive north of new Route 13 about ½ mile.
Two of the big companies that occupied some of the old plant buildings at one time was Diagraph-Bradley who manufactured stencils and dyes with expansion projects in 1954, as well as the Universal Match Corporation who occupied Ordill beginning in 1953.
After the plant was shut down, the administration building was taken over by Vocational Technical Institute, VTI, a vocational aspect of Southern Illinois University where post WWII citizens could be retrained for blue collar type jobs such as electronics and automotive repairs.
Administrators of VTI had the opportunity to live in some of the Ordill administrative housing that existed on the grounds near the admin building. VTI no longer exists, but Southern Illinois University still maintains a presence near the old admin building, which no longer exists, with its SIU Coal Research and Automotive Technologies buildings.
Much of the acreage that used to serve as Ordill is co-operatively farmed by local farmers or used to graze cattle and livestock. The old storage bunkers are still used as storage for the refuge on a limited basis and some of the bunkers serve as bat habitats.
The old concrete bunkers, of which there are many, with large, steel doors were poured with reinforced concrete. The floors were made to a depth of 24” and the ceilings were poured 16” deep. The thought being, that should an explosion occur, the charge would exert more force straight up rather than sideways, which could damage another bunker next to it.
On August 5, 1947, the entire Crab Orchard Creek Project was transferred to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge was founded.
As time moves on, the Ordill buildings which were only meant to be temporary in the first place and have served the test of time quite well are being slowly remediated or removed. The ground slowly returned to the natural grasslands and forests that they used to once be, available for natural habitat which now abounds once again, where it used to back in the Civil War days and before.
It should also be noted, that even today, an unexploded ordnance can occasionally still be found and has be to dealt with by a bomb squad for removal. Around 2006, an anti-tank mine was found during a controlled burn and exploded on the spot by a bomb squad, which suggests that landmines were in use at one time.
(Data extracted from 1946 Business Week magazine; 1938,1939,1941 Marion Daily Republican articles; Marion Living magazine, March 2007; Photos from WSIU InFocus Series; compiled by Sam Lattuca on 09/21/2013)