CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – (CLARKSVILLENOW) One of Clarksville’s oldest factories, Vulcan, will soon be closing after 80 years.
The plant at 1151 College Street was built in 1939 by B.F. Goodrich and was purchased by Vulcan in 1972.
General Manager Ed Ritter said there are currently 36 employees at the plant, which is scheduled to close near the end of the year.
The factory has had a long and unique history, and according to Ritter at one time employed around 5,000 people. That was during WWII when the site was a government high security site and manufactured gas masks for the military.
Over the years Vulcan also played a major role in the footwear industry and has produced a long list of products sold around the world. Ritter said the biggest manufacturing operations right now include rubber gasket materials.
“We put a lot of effort into doing new products and bought new equipment. We changed and over time and we’re still here,” Ritter said.
Ritter said when he came to work at Vulcan in the 1970s, the plant employed about 450 people. When the decision was made to downsize in 1996 there were around 250 people, which then dropped down to 70 as the footwear market in the U.S. collapsed. The number of workers has been at around 36 for the last 10 years.
There was a time that many products were touched by manufacturing right here at the local plant.
“As I walked around town, every day you could see something that had to do with this factory and a day didn’t go by that you couldn’t see a product that started here,” Ritter said.
The Clarksville factory is the last of around 25 plants owned by Vulcan that made footwear. Since the 1970s plants were closed in the U.S. as the footwear industry moved overseas and Clarksville now has the last surviving plant.
From time to time throughout the facility’s history, the plant was contacted by the FBI to identify shoe prints from crime scenes. In addition, the plant supplied all the Barnum & Bailey Circus rings until the circus went out of business.
“It’s unfortunate that we’ve come to the point of closing,” Ritter said. “They’re dissolving the entire corporation and we’re part of a corporation.”
Ritter said the closing, but he wants the employees to be proud of having worked at Vulcan.
“We have been involved in some really cool stuff over the years. It is not just a heel and sole factory,” he said.
In the past, both city and county officials along with Austin Peay State University have shown interest in the 33-acre piece of property, but Ritter said there’s no word on the future of the site.