|
Back then
The collection of buildings along Main Street and Chipper Curve Road that have housed Jackson Paper for the past 25 or so years have been a source of employment for local residents for more than a century, dating back to the 1901 founding of a tannery in the flats along Scotts Creek by early industrialist and entrepreneur C.J. Harris.
According to “The History of Jackson County,” and the “Economic Activities” chapter authored by John Bell of Cullowhee, Harris’ tannery went by several names – Harris-Rees, Harris, Sylva and Parsons. It was bought by Armour Leather Co. in 1915, and its name changed to reflect the new ownership.
Initially the plant had two processes – one to boil tannic acid from chipped chestnut wood and another to tan industrial grade hides for machine belts and shoe sole leather. Armour bought the company to expand the extract plant and supply tannin extract to its 14 tanneries across the United States.
By 1922 the tannery had a capacity of 300 hides a day and employed around 150 people, and the extract plant produced about 62,000 barrels of tannin extract from 45,000 cords of chestnut wood. Armour closed in 1957 when the demand for shoe sole leather, the Sylva plant’s main product, dropped sharply due to the increased use of man-made materials.
However, it was during the tannery’s heyday that paper-making became a part of the local economy. The county’s second-leading businessman, E.L. McKee, was managing the tannery for Armour and realized a new paper production process could make use of the chestnut chips that were a by-product of the tanning process. To extract the tannin needed to cure and process hides, the tannery chipped and boiled large quantities of then-abundant chestnut wood. McKee persuaded George Mead, who had developed a process to make cardboard from boiled wood chips, to open a paper plant next door. McKee also sold Armour’s extract business to Mead’s operation, and the Sylva Paperboard Co. (later Mead Corp.), produced both tannin extract and cardboard until 1953. The company ceased production of extract that year because the chestnut blight made chestnut wood too expensive.
Even without the extract operation, Mead was the largest manufacturer in Jackson County by 1955. It employed more than 300 and operated its own 10,000-acre forest that had been acquired from Blackwood Lumber Co. in 1945. (Most of Mead’s former forest holdings – primarily in the county’s Canada and Caney Fork areas – were acquired by the federal government around 1980 and now comprise the Roy Taylor Forest, which is part of the Nantahala National Forest.) Mead acquired the adjacent tannery when it closed in 1957.
Despite Mead’s success, the company experienced financial trouble due to environmental problems. The manufacturing process produced a by-product called “black liquor” that was discharged into Scotts Creek and ended up in the Tuckaseigee River. Mead began treating its discharge in 1937 and began removing the solids in 1950, but the discharge remained dark and smelly, prompting a 1957 legislative bill from Rep. C.R. Crawford of Swain County that was aimed at forcing Mead to stop polluting the Tuckaseigee. Crawford said the “brown, stinking water” in the river was a threat to Swain County’s tourist industry. Though the bill was defeated, the N.C. Stream Sanitation Commission stepped in and imposed a 1962 deadline for Mead to clean up its discharge. After more than a decade of attempting to meet federal air and water quality standards, Mead closed its Sylva plant in 1974.
The facility was sold to Dixie Container Corp. around 1980, which reopened the plant as Jackson Paper a couple of years later.
(Photos 1, 2, 3, 5 and 8 are Sylva Herald file photos; photo 4 belongs to Mary Alice Sutton of Barkers Creek, and Bryant Davis found the picture in a shed by her house and brought it by The Herald. Sutton’s husband, Frank, used to work at Mead and is in the picture; photo 6 was submitted by Perry Sutton of Dillsboro; and photo 8 was brought in by Jim Turpin of Sylva.)
Click here to Zoomify this image. (Photo 1)
Adobe Flash Player is required. If you get a security warning, click ‘Accept’/ ‘Grant’
Click here to Zoomify this image. (Photo 2)
Click here to Zoomify this image. (Photo 3)
Click here to Zoomify this image. (Photo 4)
Click here to Zoomify this image. (Photo 5)
Click here to Zoomify this image. (Photo 6)
Click here to Zoomify this image. (Photo 7)
Click here to Zoomify this image. (Photo 8)
|
