Texas Plant Welcomes Ball Brothers
Strange how history has a way of repeating itself. What seems to be abundant one day – much more than we can ever use in ten lifetimes – somehow manages, when looking back, to be there and gone in little more than a blink of the eye.
By around 1900, businessmen were being lured to Kansas by the promise of cheap natural gas. The fields back east were sputtering and dying. Many believed Kansas was the new promised land and soon factories were being bought or built.
When Ball Brothers Glass Manufacturing Company acquired the Marion Fruit Jar & Bottle Company in 1904, they not only gained a plant in Marion, Indiana, they also became the proud owners of a factory smack in the middle of the promised land – Coffeyville, Kansas. Things went well for a number of years. Improvements were made to the plant. The employees were happy. The city fathers harbored dreams of becoming an industrial mecca.
And then the gas started to run out. By 1911, the Ball brothers could see the handwriting on the wall. It was time to move on. A number of other cities with natural gas stepped forward, their civic leaders doing their best to impress. Bartlesville, Oklahoma and Shreveport, Louisiana were in the running. For a while, Muskogee, Oklahoma was in the lead. A man in Tulsa offered land, cheap gas and a building just waiting to be occupied. Reluctantly, the Ball brothers finally decided to look at Wichita Falls in north Texas.
The Chamber of Commerce of Wichita Falls offered 52 acres of land owned by the Highland Irrigation & Land Company. Cost: $20,000. Two entrepreneurs and railroad executives, Frank Kell and J. A. Kemp agreed to provide half the funds. The remainder would be funded by the local citizens. Ball also insisted that the railroads provide lower freight rates than those already in existence and improved switching facilities. The location for the plant was good with natural gas and abundant coal and sand deposits nearby.
On December 29, 1912, the remaining money needed to purchase the land was secured. Two weeks later, Frank C. Ball arrived in Wichita Falls. On January 14, 1913, surveyors were already hard at work when the agreement was signed by all parties. Ball Brothers was headed for the Lone Star State.
The decision was made to build the most modern plant possible, ready to supply customers from the southwest and Pacific coast. Everything would be located on one site: glass jar factory, zinc rolling mill, cap factory, white liners, warehouses and box factory. And this time, they were taking no chances; the eight fire-proof, steel-frame structures would be designed to burn both gas and coal.
When the first phase, the jar plant, was completed in late summer of 1913, it included equipment from the dismantled plant in Coffeyville, Kansas, and the changing of the guard was complete.
The machine shop in Ball Brothers’ Wichita Falls, Texas plant.
The Ball Mason fruit jar was made at the Ball Brothers plant in Coffeyville, Kansas (1909-1911)
1936 box of Ball salt and pepper shakers in the original box. The box lists the name of the Wichita Falls, Texas plant
1936 box of Ball salt and pepper shakers in the original box. The box lists the name of the Wichita Falls, Texas plant
