The Industrial and Manufacturing Era

The Industrial and Manufacturing Era. Perry County Bicentennial. , After the Civil War manufacturers and businesses continued to grow. The Marshall Iron Furnace and Bechtel Tannery were founded in 1871. By the late 1800s manufacturers and businesses in Newport and Oliver Township had grown considerably including planing and saw mills, lumber and stock yards, service businesses and two freight and passenger train stations. Also included were a foundry, brick yard, wagon builder, bottling plant, ice plant, glue factory and a monument stone works. , With the advent of a municipal water system in the 1890s, and later electricity, three textile mills, a milk plant and a tool factory opened. The American Oak Extract Company employed as many as 75 workers. , This produced a frantic demand for residential, religious and commercial structures, an architectural heritage that exists to this day., However, changing technologies and consolidation of industry led to a near collapse of the manufacturing economy prior to and during the Depression of the 1930s., In 1921 several hundred jobs began disappearing with the closure of the Newport and Sherman's Valley Railroad and the Marshall Iron Furnace. The Oak Extract plant closed in 1925. The planing mill went into foreclosure in 1929. In 1931 the six-decade old Bechtel Tannery ceased production. , Founded in 1922 the Vacuum Tool Company, later known as Snap-On Tools, survived in Newport until 1955. The textile mills, employing dozens of women, gradually folded. By the mid-20th century the industrial and manufacturing base of the river community virtually ceased to be. , If Newport had an economic golden age, the last quarter of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th was surely that time.