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History in
a Pecan Shell
Kansas gypsum-processor
James Sickler discovered a huge deposit of gypsum here in 1890 and
decided to exploit it. Sickler went into partnership and reestablished
his Kansas operations here.
Known as the Lone Star Cement Plaster Company, it was the business
that created the town of Acme.
Other Kansas
gypsum companies arrived and by 1898 the town had its own post office.
Two railroads made a connection to Acme - the Fort Worth and Denver
City and the Quanah, Acme, and Pacific.
By the early
1900s Acme had a school, store, hotel and depot. As the gypsum was
excavated, prehistoric mastodon fossils were discovered.
Little information
was to come from Acme through the teens, 20s and 30s. The population
reached 400 in 1945 and in time the plant became one of the largest
U.S. companies.
A plant closure
in the 1960s created a severe decline and since the plant was virtually
the only source of work, by 1975 there were only 14 people reported
living there.
Since the 1980s,
the Georgia Pacific Corporation has manufactured sheetrock at the
site.
A few scattered
buildings remained, but in the late 1990s, many of the old ruins
were bulldozed – little is left today other than the sheetrock plant.
The name Acme could only be seen on the side of the railroad bridge
– as part of the name of the railroad.
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