COMPANY TOWN

A 'company town' is a town or city in which most or all real estate, buildings (both residential and commercial), utilities, hospitals, small businesses such as grocery stores and gas stations, and other necessities or luxuries of life within its borders are owned by a single company.

Contents

Overview

In the United States

List of company towns

Europe

Belgium

Denmark

Germany

Transnistria (Moldova)

Russia

North America

Canada

United States

References

See also

Overview

Traditional settings for company towns were where extractive industries — coal, metal mines, lumber — had purchased a monopoly franchise. Dam sites and war-industry camps founded other company towns. Since company stores tend to have a monopoly in company towns, it was not uncommon for truck systems to emerge in isolated company towns.
Typically, a company town will be isolated from neighbors and centered (figuratively, if not literally) around a large production factory such as a lumber or steel mill or an automobile plant; and the citizens of the town will either work in the factory, work in one of the smaller businesses, or be a family member of someone who does. The company may also operate parks, host cultural events such as concerts, and so on. Needless to say, when the owning company cuts back or goes out of business, the economic effect on the company town is devastating, and often fatal.
Company towns sometimes become regular public cities and towns as they grow. Other times, a town may not officially be a company town, but it may be a town where the majority of citizens are employed by a single company, thus creating a similar situation to a company town (especially in regard to the town's economy).

In the United States

In the United States, it is relatively rare for places in which a single company owns all the property to be granted status as an incorporated municipality. Such wholly owned communities are more likely unincorporated and administered by company officers rather than elected officials. However, there are incorporated municipalities that are heavily dependent upon a single company and may be considered a "company town", even though the company does not technically own the town. In this vein, Washington, DC is sometimes called "America's biggest company town."
A different type of company town has appeared in the U.S. since the 1960s, where a real estate companies started developing uninhabited tracts of unincorporated lands into huge master-planned communities. These can be called company towns since they were not developed as part of a city, but completely on their own. Often these towns then grow into full fledged cities and then become incorporated, such as Irvine, California. By contrast, The Woodlands, Texas is an example of a still growing company town that might be annexed by nearby Houston in the foreseeable future.

List of company towns

Towns listed in 'bold' are still considered company towns today; other entries are former company towns. See for an unannotated list of articles.

Europe

Belgium

★ 'Louvain-la-Neuve', home of the Université Catholique de Louvain

Denmark

★ 'Billund', home of the Lego Group

Germany

★ Leverkusen, home of the Bayer AG (?)

★ 'Wolfsburg', built to house Volkswagen workers

Transnistria (Moldova)

★ 'Dnestrovsk', developed by Moldavskaya GRES

Russia

★ Norilsk, developed by extraction of nickel

North America

Canada

★ Anyox, British Columbia, a now-abandoned smelter town on Observatory Inlet, near the mouth of the Nass River.

★ Arvida or now Jonquiere, Quebec, owned by Alcan

★ Batawa, Ontario owned by Bata

★ Bralorne, British Columbia, and nearby Pioneer Mine, British Columbia; both famous gold mining towns; Bralorne's third townsite is also known as Bradian

★ Bridge River aka Bridge River Townsite, now South Shalalth, a British Columbia model village developed as part of the Bridge River Power Project and now mostly depopulated.

★ Britannia Beach, British Columbia - a semi-abandoned copper and gold mine and crushing plant near Squamish

★ Elsa, Yukon

★ Espanola, Ontario, owned by Domtar

★ 'Fermont, Quebec'

★ 'Flin Flon', Manitoba (and Saskatchewan), owned by Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting(HBMS)

★ Fort Vancouver and other former Hudson's Bay Company trading posts-cum-towns in the Pacific Northwest. Others include Colville, Victoria BC, Fort Langley BC, Hope BC and more.

★ Fraser Mills, British Columbia, now part of Coquitlam but originally owned by Crown Zellerbach (the company President was the mayor, by default and acclamation). Most workers in Fraser Mills did not live in the "village" (as incorporated) but in nearby Maillardville

★ Keno City, Yukon

★ Kitimat, British Columbia, based around an aluminum smelter built by Alcoa's Canadian subsidiary Alcan. Also nearby is Kemano which acccompanies the Kemano powerhouse of the Nechako Diversion

★ 'Labrador City, Newfoundland and Labrador' developed by the Iron Ore Company of Canada

★ Nanisivik, Nunavut, built to support a lead-zinc mine and abandoned after the mine's closure in 2002.

★ Nitinat, British Columbia, near Youbou, British Columbia - former company town of Crown Zellerbach, a forestry company

★ Ocean Falls, British Columbia, a now-abandoned pulp mill town on the central BC Coast

★ Port Mellon, British Columbia, a pulp mill and town on the east shore of Howe Sound near the Langdale ferry terminal, which is near Sechelt

★ 'Wabush, Newfoundland and Labrador'

★ Woodfibre, British Columbia a pulp mill town on the east shore of Howe Sound near Squamish

★ Walkerville, Ontario a distillery on the south shore of the Detroit River, founded by Hiram Walker

United States

★ Acipco, Alabama, formerly owned by American Cast Iron Pipe Co.

★ Ajo, Arizona

★ Alcoa, Tennessee, owned by Alcoa

★ 'Bagdad, Arizona', owned by Phelps Dodge Corporation

★ Bayview, Alabama, formerly owned by Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Co.

★ Boulder City, Nevada, built and owned by the United States Bureau of Reclamation

★ Camden, Texas, owned by the W.T. Carter & Brother Lumber Company and its successors

★ Cass, West Virginia, founded in 1901 for West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company logging the nearby mountains

★ Chester, California

★ Clarkdale, Arizona, built, named for, and formerly owned by Senator William A. Clark's United Verde Copper Company

★ Cohoes, New York, formerly owned by Harmony Mills

★ Docena, Alabama, formerly owned by Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Co.

★ Durango, Colorado, organized in 1880 by the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad

★ Edgewater, Alabama, formerly owned by Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Co.

★ 'Empire, Nevada', owned by United States Gypsum Company

★ Fairfield, Alabama, (1910) originally "Corey", formerly owned by Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Co.

★ Ford City, Pennsylvania, organized in 1887 by PPG Industries

★ Gary, West Virginia, owned by U.S. Steel

★ Gary, Indiana, owned by U.S. Steel

★ Gilman, Colorado, built around (and eventually abandoned due to) the New Jersey Zinc Company's Eagle mine.

★ Gwinn, Michigan, owned by Cleveland Cliffs Iron, nicknamed the "Model Town", because CCI intended its layout to be a model for all of their other company towns

★ Hershey, Pennsylvania, built by Hershey Chocolate Corporation

★ Holden, Washington, built by the Howe Sound Mining Company, which also owned Britannia Beach. Once the most productive copper mine in the U.S., the mine closed in 1957 and it and the townsite were sold to a unit of the Lutheran church for $1 in the 1950s. Now run as a Christian retreat center.

★ Hooper, Washington, owned by the McGregor Land and Livestock Company

★ Irvine, California, built by The Irvine Company, incorporated in 1971. The largest planned community of the world.

★ Kannapolis, North Carolina, owned by the Cannon Mills Company

★ Kaulton, Alabama, owned by Kaul Lumber Co.

★ Kohler, Wisconsin, built by the Kohler Company

★ 'Lake Buena Vista, Florida', 'Bay Lake, Florida', and the 'Reedy Creek Improvement District' located within Walt Disney World and owned by The Walt Disney Company

★ Lake Trade, Pennsylvania, a now defunct coal mining town in Venango Township, Northern Butler County

★ Lynch, Kentucky, built and formerly owned by U.S. Steel

★ 'Morenci, Arizona', owned by Phelps Dodge Corporation

★ 'Newhalem, Washington', owned by Seattle City Light, as is nearby Diablo

★ Oak Ridge, Tennessee, built in secret by the United States government for the Manhattan Project

★ Peale, Pennsylvania (1883-1912)

★ Old Hickory, Tennessee, built to house DuPont employees; now a suburb of Nashville

★ Playas, New Mexico, built by Phelps Dodge Corporation

★ 'Port Gamble, Washington', still owned by Pope & Talbot but the lumber mill has not operated since the mid-1990s

★ Proctor, Vermont, once owned by the Vermont Marble Company. The town of Proctor was under the control of Senator Redfield Proctor.

★ Pullman, Chicago, once an independent city within Illinois, owned by the Pullman Sleeping Car Co.

★ Ruston, Washington, established by industrialist William Rust. The town's primary industry was an ASARCO copper smelting plant.

★ Saltville, Virginia, dominated by Mathieson Alkali Works and its successors through the Olin Corporation.

★ Scotia, California', largely owned by the Pacific Lumber Company (PALCO).

★ Spreckels, California, formerly owned by Spreckels Sugar Company

★ Sugar Land, Texas, once owned and run by the Imperial Sugar Company, transformed into an upscale suburb

★ Thurber, Texas, owned by a coal-mining subsidiary of the Texas and Pacific Railway

★ Ybor City, Tampa, Florida, built by Vincente M. Ybor for his cigar manufacturing businesses, now one of Tampa's top night spots

References

★ Linda Carlson, ''Company Towns of the Pacific Northwest,'' 2003 ISBN 0-295-98332-9 [1]

★ Building the Workingman's Paradise: The Design of American Company Towns, Crawford, Margaret, , , London & New York: Verso, 1995, ISBN 0-86091-695-2

See also

★ Mill town

★ College town

★ Commission on Industrial Relations

★ Ghost town

★ Intentional community

★ Model village

★ Paternalism