Buckeye Ordnance Works was built in 1943. Between 1946 and the 1990s, various chemical companies have used the plant. Now it is a small wasteland.
history under ground
Ammunition Plants
Buckeye Ordnance Works
Gopher Ordnance Works
Rosemount, MN
It died when a nuke went off–and it looks like it. Nobody perished with it, though, and there is no radioactivity… just smokestacks and dead-end roads. This withered war plant has seen better days, but who doesn’t find the post-apocalyptic aesthetic a little intriguing?
INAAP: Indiana Army Ammunition Plant
Charlestown, IN
This is War City, a 10,000-acre bomb that leveled a swath of Indiana to sow the seed of a World War Two powder plant. Now it sits as, arguably, the largest abandonment in North America, with thousands of structures and miles of abandoned roads and sidewalks connecting them all. This place was so huge that I had to spend two days there, squatting overnight, just to see a fraction of its ruins.
Kingsbury Ordnance Works
Kingsbury, IN
In 1940, 250 families in rural Indiana were told by the U.S. War Department to move out–something was coming. KOP was one of the largest ammunition factories through World War II, and a few buildings still stand today.
Naval Ammunition Depot
Hastings, NE
This ammunition factory in the middle of the country produced 70% of the munitions for the US Navy at one time and employed 10,000 people. It closed in 1966.
Sunflower Ordnance Works
DeSoto, KS
What can be done if you want to cover thousands of acres peppered with abandonments? Swap that 20mpg for a proper 10-speed, chuck it over the barbed wire, then take off with a camera on your back. There’s nothing like biking through the abandoned military-industrial complex, so do you think you can keep up?