Arkansas Ordnance Plant (AOP)On June 4, 1941, the War Department notified Governor Homer Adkins and Congressman David D. Terry that a $33,000,000 fuse and detonator plant was approved for immediate construction near Jacksonville. The plant was the first national defense industry approved for the state, and at the peak of production on November 22, 1942, 14,092 workers were employed at the plant.
The contract to design, construct, and operate the plant, as well as train key personnel, was awarded to Ford, Bacon & Davis of New York, making this plant a GOCO plant. The plant was named the Arkansas Ordnance Plant and was one of the first plant of its kind in the nation. The facility had several assembly lines that occupied clusters of buildings where fuses, boosters, detonators, and primers were produced. The first assembly line was completed on March 4, 1942, and additional lines were all operational by June of 1942.
The majority of the production line workers were women called WOWs (women ordnance workers). In August 1943, 12,686 employees were working at the plant, and about seventy-five percent of these were female. By December 31, 1944, there were 3,085 African Americans working four lines and comprising twenty-four percent of the work force. There were fifty-five African-American supervisors.
Transportation to the AOP was provided by Inter-City Transit Company buses and Missouri Pacific Railroad shuttles, as well as private vehicles. The Sunny Side housing project, consisting of a total of 375 houses and additional duplexes, was started on July 5, 1942. The project supplied housing for 500 families. A 200-unit trailer park was built on the opposite side of town from the project, and both developments were rented to the AOP employees as they were completed. The chief architect for the Sunny Side project was Edwin B. Cromwell of Little Rock (Pulaski County). The houses were prefabricated in Memphis by E. L. Bruce Lumber Company. Young A. Maury of Memphis was in charge of construction of the houses. The completed sections were brought to the Jacksonville site, where crews could put up several houses a day. Dormitories were built on the AOP site. Staff housing was built on the site for the management and military personnel. Recreation facilities were built on the site. Housing, especially in the beginning, was never enough, and some workers lived in tents and in their vehicles.
The AOP continued in production from 1942 until August 1945 and produced 1,062,336,263 detonators and relays, 106,697,860 primers, 328,948,476 percussion elements, 175,856,066 fuses, and 5,810,315 boosters. As the war began winding down, the number of employees needed decreased, and by August 1945, the number of employees had dropped to 7,000. By the end of August 5, 600 of the employees were dropped from the payroll, and the plant was completely closed within six months.
In 1946, the AOP facilities were offered for sale. Some buildings were leased or sold to industries that located on the old plant site. Other buildings were removed from the site and taken to educational facilities around Arkansas. Some of the land was sold back to former owners, with a clause that, if the government needed the land, it would be retaken. The Little Rock Air Force Base took in part of the former AOP site in the 1950s, and some of the owners had to give up their land for a second time.
In 2002, the Little Rock Air Force Base Historical Foundation, Inc. purchased a building located on the site of the former AOP administration building. That building was converted in 2004 to the Jacksonville Museum of Military History, which includes information and artifacts on military history from the civil war to current military conflicts. One area is dedicated to the history of the AOP.
Interesting to learn this tidbit of Military history in a way. They got 4.00 a day vs 1.00 a day for being farm workers.
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