Category Archives: Historical Perspectives

Editorials, Historic Aiken, Historical Perspectives, June 2025

A Retrospective on Aiken’s Railroad Bridges: Part Three

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By Laura Lance

This three-part series places Aiken’s railroad cut and wooden bridges in historic context — the development and building of the Charleston-Hamburg line; issues of deterioration and upkeep; the human stories; the environmental elements; the costs.

Part Three of Three: 
The Bridges

In 1897, the SC Legislature passed a bill requiring the South Carolina & Georgia Railroad Company to erect and repair certain bridges over Aiken’s railroad cut, and to open up and grade crossings at other streets over the railroad, and to maintain the same.

The situation was urgent. According to one account in March 1897, the bridge on Newberry Street was “getting to be dangerous.” The Laurens Street bridge had recently received emergency repair by a policeman, who had to replace a plank in the bridge “to prevent further accident, one horse having fallen into the hole before it was discovered.” The other bridges [Union and York] were said to be “in bad repair.”23

In late 1897, the City and the railroad company came to an agreement whereby the railroad would, among other things, rebuild the bridges at Laurens, Newberry and York within two years. The timeline on the fulfillment of this agreement is stubborn to find in local accounts, however, the Aiken Journal and Review made a brief mention on January 10, 1911 that the bridge being built over the railroad cut at Laurens Street was nearing completion.

The Bridges

Postcard: Southern Railroad cut at Aiken, SC. 1908. Souvenir Post Card Co. In the public domain.

The Laurens Street Bridge
Erected circa 1852-1855

City Council records from throughout the 1960s show the mayor, city manager, and even the First Presbyterian Church pleading with the railroad company to address the poor visibility of the hump-backed bridge, the drooping railing, the axle-jarring holes and the ongoing rot. In those days, the First Presbyterian Church congregation used the Laurens Street bridge as a pedestrian crossing to travel from the church at the corner of Park and Laurens to the Sunday school at the Grace Estate located on the other side of the bridge.

When letters and calls failed to move the railroad, the City and church began sending letters directly to the president of the company. The church sent a second letter in 1966 to express “grave concern at the generally deteriorating condition of the Laurens Street bridge.”21

When the bridge was finally resurfaced in 1966, a brief in the local newspaper hailed the improvement as “ probably one of the most appreciated things that has been done in Aiken in the past three centuries.”24

The bridge was closed in 1971 after being declared by the Aiken Director of Public Safety to be “in unsafe condition due to erosion and a lack of maintenance.”3 The condition of the railroad cut, after nearly 10 years of abandonment by the railroad company, had left erosion to undermine the tracks and the bridge’s concrete foundation, which the Public Safety Director described as “cracked and undercut.”3

In 1974, a perfect storm of deferred and unresolved issues led to the collapse of the bridge. When the bridge collapsed again in 2012, erosion was cited as the cause after a heavy rain eroded away the soil under the bridge supports.25 

The Laurens Street bridge as seen from the Newberry Street bridge. Photographer: carlfbagge. Flickr album: Aiken, 2008.

Both of the bridge collapses were unexpected. Either could have resulted in loss of life. Fortunately, the bridge was closed during both collapses. During the 1974 collapse, the bridge was closed for repairs, with the workers actually under the bridge when the collapse began. During the 2012 collapse, the bridge had been closed due to an observant passerby who noticed a shift in the bridge’s elevation and alerted public safety. 

In the months leading up to the 1970s bridge replacement, some of the Laurens Street residents living near the bridge lobbied to either keep the bridge permanently closed or make it a pedestrian-only bridge, as they’d come to appreciate the peace and quiet.

Two factors drove the design of the 2012 bridge replacement. One was the new 23-foot clearance requirement by the railroad company, which increased the bridge height by three feet and necessitated major disruption of the roadway approach and closure of Colleton Street on the southside of the bridge. The other factor, as described in April 2012 City Council meeting minutes, was the federal emergency funding secured for the bridge by the governor’s executive order, the terms of which gave the City 180 days to complete the project.

The bridge fell in April 2012, was demolished in June, and its replacement completed in October just slightly past the 180-day deadline.

June 2025 views of the 2012 Laurens Street bridge replacement, which drew heavy criticism after its completion in October 2012. The City made efforts to improve the appearance with landscaping and by painting the chain link fence black. Click photos for larger view. Photographs by Michael Aiken.

Aesthetics and historic design considerations had not part of the process. The end result drew major criticism and compelled City Council to place the remaining three wooden bridges at York, Fairfield and Union Street on the historic register and to give the Design Review Board jurisdiction over the design of future bridges with a Certificate of Appropriateness required.

The Newberry Street Bridge
Erected circa 1852-1855

An 1893 newspaper account described the “dangerous” condition of the Newberry Street bridge. One hundred years later, in 1993, City Council members were discussing the “continuing deterioration” of the Newberry Street bridge and calling for its replacement. 

Also in 1993, the SCDOT backed out of an earlier commitment to help fund the rehabilitation of the Newberry Street and York Street bridges. This, even as the substandard condition of the railroad bridges was said to be compromising the response times of emergency vehicles. According to the City Manager at that time, “In the event of a fire, the city has to cross either the Laurens Street or Chesterfield Street bridges and then backtrack to the fire.”26

In 1994, a Newberry Street bridge inspection found no signs of erosion. In 1995, inspectors found the soil around the foundation caving in from erosion, which compelled the immediate closure and replacement of the bridge. This incident illustrated the speed with which critical damages can be inflicted to the foundation from the effects of rain in just one year’s time. 

Stories of flooding, landslides, cave-ins, and erosion, with attendant damage to tracks and bridges, have always existed in the railroad cut. Modern-day attention to stormwater runoff has abated, but not eliminated, the effects of weather on the landscape in the railroad cut.

In January 1997, City Council considered and approved the design for the Newberry Street bridge replacement. Included in the discussion were requests from Newberry Street residents to close this bridge off to vehicular traffic and make it pedestrian-only, as the bridge closure had made their neighborhood quieter and more close-knit. 

Newberry Street bridge railing. Photographer carlfbagge. Flickr album: Aiken, 2008.

Council voted to approve funding for the vehicular bridge. The SCDOT agreed to cover 80% of the cost, with the City and railroad company each paying 10%. The City paid an additional $29k above cost to fund a Historic Commission-approved bridge railing designed to be in keeping with the 1937-era railing on the nearby Chesterfield Street bridge. This brought the total shares for the railroad company and city to, respectively, $115k and $144k. 

During negotiations, the railroad company offered to pay the city’s share if the City would agree to take on the future responsibility for maintenance, repair and replacement of the rest of the railroad bridges. The City declined. 

The Chesterfield Street Bridge
Erected circa 1894-1897

Chesterfield Street bridge in 2008. The Newberry and Laurens Street bridges are visible beyond. Photographer: carlfbagge. Flickr album: Aiken, 2008.

A May 20, 1885 Aiken Journal and Review brief mentioned that a petition had been drawn up by Aiken citizens to have a bridge built over the railroad cut on Chesterfield just below the jail. Twelve years later, in December 1897, an agreement was reached between the City of Aiken and the South Carolina & Georgia Railroad for the railroad company to erect a bridge at Fairfield Street within 6 months and to rebuild the bridges at Laurens, Newberry and York within two years. The stipulation was that all these bridges be built in the same style as the “new”23 wooden bridge at Chesterfield Street. These newspaper accounts offer solid clues on when these bridges were built. 

The Chesterfiield Street bridge as viewed from the southbound lane of the York Street bridge. 2010. Photographer carlfbagge. Flickr album: Aiken, 2010.

The Chesterfield Street bridge was, of course, replaced in 1937 by the federal government, presumably as part of FDR’s 1930s New Deal infrastructure projects. The total cost for the 105-ft reinforced concrete bridge was $16,618. At 88 years of age today, the Chesterfield Street bridge could be Aiken’s oldest railroad bridge. Who knows? 

Views of the Chesterfield Street railing. June 2025. Photographs by Michael Aiken.

The York Street Bridge
Erected circa 1852-1855

Over the past 100 years, the York Street bridge(s) have reportedly been replaced four times — in 1933, 1952, 1993 and 2017. 

The newly-built northbound lane of the York Street prior to opening in 2017.
Photograph by Michael Aiken.

Before 1952, there was only one bridge at York. In 1952, a second bridge was added in the northbound lane. At that time, Aiken’s northside was experiencing major growth with the influx of population from the Savannah River Plant. 

In March 1993, Norfolk Southern began work tearing down and replacing the northbound lane of York Street. The construction took longer than expected due to a delay in the arrival of 39 specialty timbers needed to finish the job.27 The delay provoked a barrage of complaints and prompted SC House Representative Irene Rudnick to draft legislation requiring any bridge under 150 feet to have work completed within 60 days or face a $1000 per day fine.28 The railroad finished the northbound lane in October, followed by the southbound lane in December 1993.

The York Street bridge, northbound lane, as viewed from the Fairfield Street bridge in 2008. Photographer carlfbagge. Flickr album: Aiken, 2008.

Less than 25 years later, in 2016, the York Street bridges were closed by the SCDOT, their condition described as “dilapidated” and “in need of total replacement.”29 Because the bridges had been designated Historic Landmark status on the Aiken Historic Register in 2013, the design of the new 2017 bridge was drawn in collaboration with local historical preservationists, community input, local leaders, and the SCDOT. The idea was to preserve the historic, wooden-bridge aesthetic in a design with longer-term structural integrity.

ABOVE: More views of the newly-constructed York Street bridge replacement in 2017, taken in the days before official opening. Photographs by Michael Aiken.

The Fairfield Street Bridge
Erected in 1899

In December 1885, the Aiken Town Council instructed the Intendant (a precursor to the office of Mayor) to contact South Carolina Railway and request them to erect bridges “over their excavation where it crosses the streets of Fairfield and Chesterfield.”30 And to put teeth into the request, Council threatened legal action. 

ABOVE: The Fairfield Street bridge as it looked from the Colleton side looking toward Park Avenue in 2023, seven years into closure. Photograph by Laura Lance.

This was, perhaps, a reflection of the mood of a town through which a deep ravine had been dug some 30 years earlier, dividing the town in two; a severed town growing impatient with the railroad company’s unfulfilled commitment to reconnect the two sides of town with bridges.

The Aiken Town Council’s 1885 request for a bridge at Fairfield was followed eight months later by the Charleston earthquake, whose damages drove the railroad company back into receivership. The Fairfield Street bridge was finally built in 1899. 

Disclaimer: There are no standardized definitions in newspaper accounts to differentiate between terms such as built, rebuilt, replaced, repaired and rehabilitated. No attempt is made here to define or draw distinctions between these terms. Also, records regarding any replacements or major rehabilitation of the Fairfield Street bridge after its original 1899 construction are sparse and contradictory. Railroad company records could provide specifics, but are not integral to the purpose of this article.

Norfolk Southern spokespersons, quoted in various local media, have stated that the Fairfield Street bridge was “replaced” in 1952. According to a 2016 SCDOT bridge inspection report, the existing bridge was “built” in 1992. Yet, on January 12, 1998, the bridge made the AAA Carolina list of structurally deficient bridges. The bridge was closed for three days in February 1999 while the SCDOT did preventative maintenance on the timbers. “A single timber piling was added to the bridge to provide extra support next to a timber, which was rotting.”31

In 2016, the bridge was closed in the wake of an SCDOT structural inspection report that rated the conditions of its deck and superstructure as poor and rated the substructure, or foundation, as failed. A later inspection in 2020 by the engineering firm, Davis and Floyd found worsening in the bridge condition since the 2016 SCDOT report.

In late 2019, the SCDOT agreed to pay $1.3 million of the cost (then estimated at $2.1 to $3.1 million total) to replace the Fairfield Street Bridge. In 2020, during a City Council work session (see screenshots below), council members heard a presentation by Mr. Todd Warren, representative of the Columbia, SC engineering firm, Davis and Floyd. Three options for bridge replacement were reviewed.

Screenshots from minutes of September 14, 2020 City Council work session discussion on the Fairfield Street bridge to include a recap of the inspection reports and the three options for bridge replacement. Click for full-size view.

In 2020, the City lacked a clear path to funding its share of the bridge replacement. In 2024, the City was able to fund up to $3 million, the funding primarily sourced from Aiken’s share of the $600 million plutonium settlement awarded to the state in 2020. Under the agreement with SCDOT, the City is to assume ownership of this bridge in perpetuity.

In the absence of future nuclear industry windfalls, the funding for future bridge replacements may be stubborn to materialize.

The replacement cost for the Fairfield Street bridge was estimated at $184k in 1991. In 1993, the estimate rose to $450k. In 2013, the estimate was as high as $700k. In 2020, estimates were given for three different bridge options, ranging from $2.1 to $3.2 million. In 2025, those three estimates now range from $3.8 to $5.8 million, with the lower-priced option buying a bridge with higher repair costs that will also need to be replaced every 30 years.

Of course, the three options were for a vehicular bridge. To date, there have been no options offered for a pedestrian bridge. Given the large public support for a pedestrian bridge, as voiced in the May 6, 2025 Design Review Board City meeting, the pedestrian options should be on the table during the next round of discussions.

ABOVE: More views of the Fairfield Street bridge. May 2025. Photos by Michael Aiken.

The Union Street Bridge
Erected circa 1855-1861

An exchange of communications between the AikenTown Council and the attorneys for the railroad, published in the Aiken Journal and Review in 1885, indicated that there were several bridges built over the length of Aiken’s railroad cut by 1855, but a Union Street bridge was not one of them.32 In 1876, however, bids were being taken by Aiken County Commissioners for repairs or rebuilding of the Union Street Bridge.33 Considering these breadcrumbs of fact and the history, it is all but certain that the first Union Street bridge was built before the Civil War. 

The Union Street bridge viewed from the Fairfield Street bridge in 2009.. Photographer: carlfbagge. Flickr album: Aiken, 2009.

The Union and Fairfield Street bridges are the last two of the older-style wooden bridges that once spanned all six crossings. The railroad cut is shallowest at Union Street, which has compelled the shape of the bridge and its attending moniker, “high bridge,” for much of its existence. The bridge’s awkward configuration has been a factor in numerous accidents, mishaps, mysteries and tragedies over the years, not to mention the ongoing saga to maintain this perpetually crumbling structure. 

Certain allowances have always been made for the Union Street bridge, with a loyal following of admirers pushing back against talk of changing the bridge. It’s that higgledy-piggledy charm; it’s the fact that this is the last of the hump-backed bridges; it’s a fondness for the earlier era of steam engines, when all of Aiken’s railroad bridges had a similar vaulted shape, although none so high as the Union Street bridge. Even as its steep, gabled pitch was a necessity, the design has been the source of longstanding concern, as drivers were unable to see over their hoods while traversing the bridge, and were blind to pedestrians who might be crossing on the other side.

Union Street bridge deck in 2008. Photographer: carlfbagge. Flickr album: Aiken, 2008.

A November 1974 Aiken Standard story began with the question, “The Union Street bridge: Is it picturesque or just dangerous?” From there, the article described in words and photos a scene of “neglect” with trash littering the railroad cut below and, above, daylight peeking through a deteriorated bridge whose thick asphalt had eroded to reveal weathered and rotting planks; a bridge with “chunks of pavement the size of baseballs” scattered in its potholes; a bridge whose railing had been leaning “dangerously over the edge, pulling out its own nails.”34

Aiken Public Safety had reported the bridge’s “precarious condition” to the railroad company three months earlier, in August 1974, and the railroad company responded by sending its bridge supervisor to inspect the bridge.35 This was followed by a re-nailing of the bridge railing and by propping a wooden plank “between the bridge and a handy tree” to support the sagging rail. 34

As the article noted, the railroad company was bound by a 1898 agreement to maintain the bridge. The problem, (as would later be pointed out by City Attorney James Holley during City Council discussion in 1990 over the deteriorating conditions of the Newberry, York and Fairfield Street bridges) was that, while the 1898 agreement stipulated the railroad company would maintain the bridges, it did not specify the standards for that maintenance. 

A similar lack of specificity may have played a role in the railroad company’s failure throughout most of the 19th century to honor its early 1850s agreement to build and maintain the bridges across the railroad cut in exchange for permission from the Town Council to dig that red gash through the center of town. 

The 1974 condition of the Union Street bridge appeared to be a matter of history repeating itself. The City’s hands were already full that year with ongoing litigation with the railroad company and contractors over the collapse of the Laurens Street bridge earlier that year, so the issues of the Union Street bridge went unchallenged. Thebridge has been closed numerous times since the 1970s for repairs and rehabilitation of the decking.

In January 2023, the bridge was closed by the SDDOT due to “unspecified structural problems.” Replacement with a vehicular bridge is no longer being considered due to the degree of disruption this would create to the roadways, parkways, and neighborhoods on either side of the bridge. There is popular support for a pedestrian bridge. The feasibility and cost of this option have yet to be studied. 

ABOVE: The Union Street bridge in April 2023, three months after its closure in January 2023. Photographs by Laura Lance

ABOVE: More views of the closed Union Street bridge. June 2025.
Photos by Michael Aiken.

Looking Forward

Today, the 136-mile railroad from Charleston to Hamburg no longer exists. The current line runs from Charleston to Branchville, about 60 miles east of Aiken. It picks up again near the Oakwood community on the other side of Montmorenci. The railroad between Branchville and Oakwood was abandoned in the 1980s, and most of the tracks were removed by the 1990s. The surviving 13-mile track from Oakwood to Warrenville is currently leased by Aiken Railway, a short line railroad company whose freight includes kaolin, glass fiber products, and feed and seed. 

The physical presence of the historic Charleston to Hamburg line has all but vanished from the Aiken area over the past century. First went the steam engine, then the loss of passenger service in 1950, then the demolition of Aiken’s passenger station in 1954, then the incremental loss of freight service, the abandonment of the line, the tearing up of the tracks, the loss of the old wooden bridges, and the elemental disappearance of the very earth of the railroad cut — gone with the wind, along with a history that apparently cannot be told in polite company. 

What remains to Aiken is a working, 13-mile short-line railroad; two severely deteriorated wooden bridges; and a railroad cut whose ongoing erosion carries the potential to undermine the bridges and adjacent properties.

ABOVE: View of the Aiken tracks from near the intersection of Charleston Street and Park Avenue. June 2025. Photo by Michael Aiken.

Aiken is not the only town in the state to inherit a vanished railroad. Currently, 350 miles of South Carolina’s abandoned railroad beds have been transformed into parts of the Palmetto Trail, a network for pedestrian and bicycle travel, with an additional 150 miles planned. Repurposing old railroad beds for pedestrian trails seems a worthy form of preservation. The same can be said for the old wooden bridges.

During the May 6 Design Review Board meeting on the Fairfield Street bridge, a large number of people came to speak, with the majority in favor of making this a pedestrian-only bridge. As one speaker pointed out, the Fairfield bridge is part of the historic Colleton and South Boundary corridor — an area heavily traveled by people who come from all over town to walk, run, push strollers, bicycle, and walk their dogs. A pedestrian bridge in the most pedestrian-friendly neighborhood in town makes good sense. 

In a city increasingly estranged from itself by overdevelopment, we should be creating more of these places — more tree-lined streets where people might want to walk; more pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods; more bicycle-friendly routes and sidewalks for people to travel from one place to another.

Restoring Aiken’s last two wooden bridges to their original 19th-century uses, before the age of the automobile, seems a worthy form of preservation. Can this be accomplished without demolishing the bridges outright? Good question. This and all options for pedestrian bridges should be on the table for consideration. Drawing lessons from history, we always have the option to learn from our mistakes.


______________________

For Reference

  1. Editors, Journal and Review. “The Railroad Bridge Bill.” Aiken Journal and Review. December 15, 1897.
  2. Wilder, Mary. “Resurfacing of Laurens Street Bridge Immeasurable Relief to Motorized Population.” Aiken Standards and Review. July 12, 1966 
  3. Banton, Amy. “Laurens Street Bridge Continues to Collapse.” Aiken Standard, April 5, 2012. Bridge closed when passing motorist noticed the southwestern part of the bridge had sunk 16 inches.
  4. Lord, Philip. “DOT Backing Off on Aiken Bridges.” Aiken Standard. August 11, 1993. 
  5. Lord, Philip, “Timbers ‘Holding Up’ Bridge Repairs.” Aiken Standard. July 12, 1993. 
  6. Lord, Philip. “Bridge Work Delayed Again.” Aiken Standard. August 26, ne1993. 
  7. Editorial. “Aiken Needs to Fix its Wooden Bridges.” Aiken Standard. February 23, 2016. 
  8. Aiken Journal and Review. Page 3. December 23, 1885. 
  9. “Aiken Bridge Reopened.” Aiken Standard. February 20, 1999. 
  10. “Bridges Over the Railroad Cut.” Aiken Journal and Review. May 22, 1885.
  11. Public notice in Aiken Journal and Review. February 12, 1876.
  12. Wendel, Debby. ”Picturesque Bridge Still Needs Repairs.” Aiken Standard and Review. November 29, 1974.
  13. Wendel, Debby. ”Southern Railroad Bridge Precarious.” Aiken Standard and Review. August 17, 1974.
Historical Perspectives, Savannah River Site

Driving Around Pantex. The Little Nuclear Weapons Plant on the Prairie.

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A look at Savannah River Site’s weapons production colleague.

by Don Moniak
January 1, 2024

The Pantex Plant in the Texas Panhandle is about one-twelfth the size of the Savannah River Site (SRS) but stores five times more plutonium. Most of this plutonium is tentatively scheduled to be shipped to SRS over the next twenty to fifty years. Any major accident at Pantex could accelerate that ever evolving schedule.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Pantex nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly plant in the Texas Panhandle has been the sole endpoint in the nation’s nuclear weapons complex for nearly fifty years. After the first Cold War ended, the cessation of plutonium production, coupled with the abrupt termination of of Rocky Flats plutonium (Pu) pit production left Pantex as both the beginning and the end of the weapons complex. Or, as DOE puts it, All Roads Lead to Pantex.

Pantex is also the home for the nation’s supply of primary nuclear explosive “triggers”—quaintly known as plutonium pits—that have been removed from the nuclear weapons stockpile. Each pit is estimated to contain an average of three kilograms of plutonium-gallium alloy.

Although the approximate number of pits stored at Pantex is now classified, it is estimated there is anywhere between 17,000 and 20,000 currently stored in WWII-era bunkers. An estimated 11,000 to 13,000 are surplus to military needs; thousands more are in a strategic reserve and categorized as “national security assets.”

The future of SRS plutonium operations begins at Pantex. First, the renewed plutonium pit production mission, currently planned for SRS and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), is reliant on the strategic reserve pits. Second, the 35-40 tons of plutonium in surplus pits remains tentatively scheduled for shipment to SRS for disposition into various waste forms, as it has since 2000. (1)

The difference between Pu at Pantex and SRS is four-fold. First, at 200,000 acres, SRS is twelve times larger in area than the relatively tiny, 16,000 acre Pantex plant. An accident at Pantex would have bad consequences for neighbors, especially since all the neighbors are farmers and even the rumor of crop contamination can have a disastrous economic affect. SRS has a miles-wide buffer between its high-consequence radiochemical operations and materials storage and the nearest residents.

Second, the plutonium-gallium alloy contained in pits is considered the most stable phase of plutonium, whereas SRS has what is essentially the Cold War’s Pu dregs; which require a more rigid level of monitoring, and are more difficult to process.

The only time Pantex has processed loose plutonium was in response to an accident. This well known fact once led former SC Senator Strom Thurmond to foolishly refer to Pantex worker as “amateurs.”

Third, Pantex sits on the dry, windswept prairie of the Texas Panhandle, (Figure 1) not hidden within humid and dense southeastern forests.

Finally, the State of Texas has accepted the long-term mission of storing sixty plus tons of plutonium in a small area of the Texas Panhandle for up to fifty years; whereas the State of South Carolina objected to its essential long-term storage role, but only after it was no longer tied to the long-term and lucrative production job called MOX fuel fabrication.

Figure 1. Pantex Nuclear Weapons Plant and surrounding high prairie farmland. Neighbors farmed “right up to the fence.” Google Earth)

On the Llano

The Southern Great Plains of Texas consist of a broad plateau known as the Llano Estacado. The LLano sits above the Southern Ogallala Aquifer and is often referred to as the “world’s flattest mountain.”

The Llano has a steady undulation imperceptible to newcomers. It is dissected in the South by canyons of various depths, the most notable being Palo Duro Canyon. The natural vegetation is mid-grass and tall-grass prairie. (Figure 2)

It is dotted by shallow depressions containing ephemeral to intermittently-occurring bodies of water known as playas (Figure 3). The playas attract large flocks of migratory waterfowl and can get deep and full enough to water ski.

It is the kind of place where darkness can be viewed to the east before the sun sets in the west. Smoke from wildfires in native prairie and conservation reserve grasslands appear deceptively close, when it is actually very distant. Grain silos are visible from miles away and act as landmarks.

The country is predictably laid out in square grids. Drive around a square enough times and it seems circular. It is only a twenty-mile drive around Pantex—twenty minutes if in a hurry, or an hour while sightseeing.

Figure 2. Conservation Reserve Grasslands on the Texas Panhandle. USDA photo.
Figure 3: Aerial view of ephemeral ponds known as Playas. (Photo by TNRCC)

Pantex Plant

The windswept, dry, open prairie is surprisingly not a bad place to mask the presence of a nuclear weapons assembly plant. Unlike grain silos, the low physical profile of the Pantex Plant makes it unnoticeable from long distances and even unobtrusive from its barbed wire fences.

The primary tasks at Pantex are disassembly of retired nuclear weapons and reassembly of existing models in the nuclear arsenal.

The latter includes utilization of fresh canisters of SRS-produced tritium gas which boosts the destructive power of primary nuclear explosives ten to twenty-fold; highly enriched uranium subassemblies from Oak Ridge which are necessary for secondary nuclear explosions; and hundreds of replacement nonnuclear parts from the Kansas City plant.

Development, testing, and fabrication of high explosives weapon components constitute another militarily critical role at Pantex. Pit storage and monitoring is perhaps the most passive task.

Pantex’s origin was obtrusive and controversial to many. Just as thousands were displaced from Aiken, Barnwell, and Allendale Counties to make way for Savannah River Plant, Pantex was founded on land seized from mostly German immigrant farmers to construct a World War II munitions plant.  Many of the WW II bunkers remain at Pantex, stocked with pits and used for temporary weapon storage.

The seized Pantex lands were not returned after the war, fostering a lingering resentment by the dislocated families that endured for at least half a century. The munitions plant was converted in 1951 to a nuclear weapons assembly site with a major high explosives testing and development role.

Proctor and Gamble was Pantex’s first operating contractor, and many locals came to believe it was a detergent plant. P&G reportedly left after five years to avoid its family friendly products from being associated with the bomb, and was replaced for nearly the next half-century by the Mason and Hangar Company.

Pantex is the only plant in the U.S. nuclear weapons production complex where an inadvertent nuclear explosion can occur, though it is such a remote possibility that it was deemed as “beyond credible” until the turn of this century.

Figure 4: Early scene from The Plutonium Circus

The Perimeter Tour: Cells, Bays, Firing Sites, Center Pivots, and Pits.

The best starting point for a drive around Pantex is also the closest point from the Amarillo airport, the nearby maximum security prison (where the inmate population was not considered in Pantex radioactive exposure analyses for years), and an IBP meat processing plant. The airport sits only miles away and the risk of an aircraft crash into pit and weapon storage bunkers was a fierce and persistent subject of debate for years.

Huge industrialized pig farms emerged as a major industry in the 1990s in counties north of the plant. Though these farms are visually unobtrusive in the landscape, their all-encompassing stench is most certainly not. In early 2000, a truck carrying dead pigs too far gone for rendering stopped suddenly at a traffic light west of the plant, causing its cargo to fly over the top of the cab onto the highway, a comical confluence of three economic mainstays of the Amarillo area—plutonium, prisons, and pigs.

The route around Pantex, heading west to east at the start, involves three left turns. Jim Hightower, the former Texas Agricultural Commissioner turned pundit, is credited with the saying, “As my mother used to tell me, two wrongs don’t make a right. But I soon figured out that three left turns do make a right.’

The west-to-east route on the southern boundary is also the route used in the motorcycle scene of the locally famous docu-comedy The Plutonium Circus. (Figure 4)

The 160-640 acre farm parcels on the south side of the road are interrupted only by the historic Peace Farm, a ten-acre tract where members gathered for years to bear witness to weapons transports.

A few miles further east is the first left turn. The first farm site on the right was once owned by Lee Cockrell. In the early 1990’s, Lee was one of the few farmers who supported a Pantex expansion that included a plutonium pit production role, and criticized neighbors who did not. The situation changed later in the decade when a plume of groundwater contaminated with hexavalent chromium polluted his drinking water well and he started breaking out in hives.

Within two years Pantex officials alienated Mr. Cockrell. He became a persistent, formidable critic who always carried a sheaf of his documents. Soon Department of Energy officials, who for years had claimed the contamination would never migrate “off-site,” ended any remaining fondness for Lee.

Catty-corner from Cockrell’s old place is DOE headquarters, the only building with public access, and one of the few facilities easily visible from the road. (Figure 5)

Figure 5: Pantex Headquarters. (Google Earth/Street Scapes)

A mile or so further north, the main plant with its array of “cells” and “bays” enters the view, but still remains inconspicuous. There are six cells in Zone 12, five of them operational. (Figure 6)

The cells, also known as “gravel gerties,” are host to the most sensitive and delicate weapons assembly and disassembly work. The ~115-pound high explosive package is “mated” onto the plutonium pit during assembly, and removed during disassembly. On rare occasions, there can be issues like one in 2005 when there was an “unexpected cracking of a high explosive main charge during disassembly.”

Numerous detonators and actuators that are removed during disassembly and replaced during reassembly are also sensitive to everything from static electrical discharges to more powerful electrical surges during lighting storms.  Any component involved in the detonation process that “functions as designed” is an unwelcome occurrence.

The operations involve a three-person crew of production technicians (PTs). One technician serves as a procedure reader, and the other two follow each thoughtfully-produced procedure to perform the warhead assembly or disassembly according to plan. (Figure 7)

Not following the procedure, or the discovery that a procedure needs adjusting, can result in a work stoppage, where the weapon is placed in a safe configuration and an investigation ensues to chart a path forward.

In earlier days the high explosives were more sensitive, meaning a dropped package of 115 pounds of advanced high explosives were more sensitive to fire and could more easily explode on impact. The cells are designed to collapse during such an event to trap as much of the plutonium and other resulting radioactive debris as possible, and the three workers inside would never be found.

No such event has happened, but in 1978 three workers were killed and never found when a much smaller amount of high explosives detonated during a machining operation in a test facility.

Figure 6: Aerial view of the array of weapons disassembly and assembly cells and bays. The cells are the conical-shaped buildings . (DOE Stock Photo)

Figure 7: View of the three-person rule in place during Pantex production work. State of Texas Archive Photo.

In 1988, a major accident in a cell did happen and rendered the facility useless for decades. During disassembly, a small electrostatic discharge caused a non-nuclear part that releases tritium gas from its container to “function as designed.” Four grams of tritium with 40,000 curies of radioactive beta particles were released in the small space, and then vented to the outside environment. DOE did not notify Pantex neighbors of the release.

In 2010, another previously unthinkable event happened when heavy rains created a half-foot of standing water in nuclear explosives facilities. Earlier Pantex safety analyses had found that flooding was not a “potential event initiator.” No accidents occurred, but the event caused a major reexamination of previous safety assumptions and analyses.

Bays

Bays are additional assembly/disassembly areas focused on the array of components and parts found in any weapon. Violations of nuclear explosive procedures or the need for new procedures is as common in bays as they are in cells.

One of the more extreme accidents in a bay was the destruction of a weapon, meaning it was rendered useless. In 1997, during disassembling a B61 Mod 3 nuclear warhead, the procedure for a different weapon modification was used. When it came time to remove one component, technicians heard a loud boom, saw smoke, and smelled an acrid odor. The Pantex public relations department minimized the experience by describing it as a ‘pop and an odor.”

The cause remains classified, but by 2000 reports of “destroyed weapons” emerged. DOE would not confirm or deny that the loud boom, smoke, and acrid odor were the result of a “weak link” functioning as designed. Weak links are weapon parts designed to disable and render a weapon useless when unauthorized energy is introduced into the system.

Eight years later, there was a “disassembly abnormality” in a cell when, during “separation of a weapon subassembly, a component snapped and the tooling applied a force to a main charge in excess of the procedural limit.” The initial report included the fact that a detonator cable had been accidentally pulled out of a detonator assembly. In yet another report, the problem was further refined as, “high explosive main charges separat(ing) at an unexpected step in the disassembly process.” Two months passed before progress was made on final disassembly. There were later public reports that the incident could have led to an accidental nuclear detonation, but DOE would never publicly confirm such a scenario.

Figure 8: The former Osborn family farm. (Google Street Scapes)

After passing the receiving area known as Building 16-12 is another left turn. 

The first farm on the right is the former home of Jim and Jeri Osborn. (Figure 8). The couple lived amiably with Pantex as a neighbor, even when large chunks of metal from outside explosives testing landed in their fields. Jim used to show off the heavy chunks to visiting journalists.

Visible in the short distance is the small “firing range’ where larger experimental explosions are performed. Much smaller experimental explosions occur within an indoors testing facility, where high-tech monitoring devices generate detailed images of the explosions. Also nearby are the old burning grounds, where about fifty tons of high explosives were annually burned in open pits for various reasons—declassification of shape, demilitarization, and hazard reduction. Exposure to neighbors were minimized by Pantex PR officials for decades.

The always tenuous relationship among farm families who predated Pantex intensified when DOE proposed plutonium processing missions. Unlike SRS, Rocky Flats, Hanford, and Los Alamos, Pantex had only handled plutonium contained within the sealed pits. The only time it was handled as a powder was when a pit accidentally cracked during disassembly. (2)

The Osborns’ relationship worsened in 1994 when Pantex set off a massive explosives charge less than a mile from their home during an emergency drill. The blast was far more powerful than the normal window-rattling tests which the family was accustomed to enduring. The explosion damaged the foundation and strew paintings and kitchenware around the house. The event was widely perceived as an act of reprisal for the Osborns’ outspokenness.

Due to the combination of DOE’s refusal to accept responsibility, and the lack of attorneys willing to take on the gargantuan national security bureaucracy and its arcane information classification system, the Osborns were forced for several years to argue their case in the court of public opinion. The couple began ending public comments to DOE with the phrase, “if their lips are moving, they’re lying.”

Then it was discovered that the explosion happened during an emergency drill in which a neighbor was hypothetically impacted, but the drill was only supposed to involve a miniscule explosives charge. A previous Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory report was also discovered that described the maximum safe charge at a one-mile distance from a home as about one-eighth the power of the emergency drill explosion. Enough information had accumulated to compel DOE to finally settle, though only for a pittance and without an admission of culpability.

West of the Osborn place is a short, small rise. A health researcher from the humid east, fresh off the plane and already confused by the big sky and long horizons, once incredulously looked at it and asked his hosts ‘WHAT RISE?” as if it was a joke.

At the top of the rise further west is a farm where a young family once lived and farmed. Their well water was contaminated by high explosive residues and solvents. That too was never supposed to happen.

Plant officials had long claimed that a ‘perched aquifer with high levels of explosives and solvents contamination was isolated and not connected to the Ogallala Aquifer. As neighboring farmers had informed DOE for years, that was not the case. To make matters worse, DOE and state regulators failed to publicly disclose the findings for three months.

The Scenic Pit Storage View

Just west of the rise is one of the better, though still limited views (Figure 9) of the physically low profile weapons and plutonium storage bunkers. Over a small playa is Zone 4, where the plutonium that is scheduled to someday head to SRS remains in seventy to eighty-year old storage bunkers that largely lack temperature and humidity controls.

The DOE’s Record of Decision (ROD) opting for long-term (up to fifty years) storage of surplus pits at Pantex was made in January of 1997. The same ROD included selection of Savannah River Site (SRS) for long-term (up to fifty years) consolidated storage of surplus non-pit plutonium metals and powders.

SRS’ candidacy for long-term surplus pit storage ended with that decision, in large part because thousands of non-surplus “national security assets” were also to be stored at Pantex.

Problems with pit storage have been documented since the 1990’s. Most bunkers are of WW-II origin, and many of them (Figure ) have no humidity or temperature controls, this in a region with staggering climate extremes. They are also even prone to flooding.

Until the early 2000’s the pits were not stored in sealed containers, contrary to the directives of National “design agency” Laboratories which specified that, “no pit should be stored an appreciable period of time in these (unsealed) containers.”

In 1999 the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board issued Recommendation 99-1, Safe Storage of Fissionable Material Called Pits.
The Board emphasized the need for storage in sealed containers to prevent corrosion of pit cladding; in addition to thermal monitoring to avoid excessive, damaging temperatures in the bunkers, and improved facility storage for the thousands of strategic reserve pits that had accumulated by 1999, and have continued to accumulate to this day. The Board wrote the following about the investment and existing value of the militarily critical pits:

“Pits in the strategic reserve at Pantex have great value to national defense. These pits, manufactured at great cost and great effort by the Department of Energy and its forebears, are probably only second in importance to nuclear weapons in the military stockpile. In the nuclear weapons defense system, they are effectively irreplaceable. Their assured safe protection should be a vital component of national defense.”

Thus, a cabinet agency that constantly tried to justify the need for new pits retained a policy of substandard care of potential replacement pits.

Figure 9. Plutonium pit storage bunkers on the low horizon. Google Street View
Figure 10. Pantex Zone 4 Bunkers where plutonium pits are stored and some weapons are staged pending disassembly, monitoring, or reassembly.

Recommendation 99-1 was closed in 2005 after Pantex managed to repackage more than 97 percent of the pits into sealed containers, and improved thermal monitoring was implemented.

But by 2022, as the inventory increased another ten percent over 2014 levels, up to fourteen percent of all pits were described as being in unsealed containers. If the pit storage limit of 20,000 has been reached, that means that upwards of 3,000 pits are stored in substandard conditions.

Still, despite the difficulties, there is no outcry from the State of Texas demanding early removal of the pits. This contrasts with South Carolina, where fears of plutonium storage at the most experienced site in the country were exploited by political leaders to extract a $600 million settlement from the federal treasury; and also foist some materials upon less prepared nuclear weapons reservations like the Nevada Test Site. 

If DOE begins to depopulate Pantex of its pits, well-equipped SRS will face some of the same difficulties.  It will have to accommodate pits with high heat production or whose cladding is not fire resistant—a substantive concern if pit disassembly ever reaches SRS.

Figure 11. Plutonium pit containers and schematic of storage. From Pantex Pit Inventory.


Two more miles, past a group of center pivots, is the final left turn. The second farm on the right, with Pantex on the left, is owned and operated by Doris and Phil Smith.

Doris and Phil Smith were at time’s Pantex’s biggest nightmare—life long third-generation farmers, solid citizens, and knowledgeable, formidable speakers. Phil’s thundering but steady voice reverberated through meeting rooms, especially as he described DOE’s chronic arrogance towards the people. Doris would recite technical issues about groundwater, plutonium, and tritium before often ending with “We grow food for the world, you build weapons to destroy it.” In 2017, she told the Amarillo Globe-News, “(Pantex) didn’t necessarily lie to you — they just didn’t tell you the whole truth.”

Doris was also a promiment local artist, whose “Midnight Mass” painting of their beloved St. Francis of Assissi Church adorned many homes across the Panhandle and beyond. The original hung in the entrance way of the church. Adjacent to the church is the community center where semi-annual dances were held.

A former pastor of St. Francis, Bishop Leroy Mathiessen, once urged Pantex workers to leave their weapons jobs, and offered assistance in finding new work. In 1998, on the same day that Bishop Matthiessen received an award in Washington D.C. from an alliance of nuclear weapons plants neighbors, somebody lit the church on fire and it burned to the ground. The arsonist was never found.

A few miles to the west of the plant’s southwest corner, where the drive around Pantex ends, the new St. Francis of Assissi church stands on its original ground. No money from the Pantex contractor was accepted for the reconstruction.

Footnotes

(1) Originally, pit plutonium was to be processed into a plutonium/mixed oxide fuel (MOX), a mission which devolved into a prime example of a failed mega-project. Now, plans are for processing the 27 to 34 tons of surplus pit plutonium into a less complicated waste form, simply labeled as “dilution.”

As described in Plutonium is Not for Amateurs, this planning began in the mid-1990s and has yet to progress past the pilot stage. SRS currently processes about 0.3 tons/per year at its K-Area plutonium waste production area. Although it must be noted that the current slow rate is influenced by prioritization of the most difficult materials, it could still take up to more than 30 years to finish processing the ~11 tons of plutonium presently stored in K-Area.

While South Carolina political leaders cried foul in the mid 2010’s over the continued presence after fifteen years of a mere eleven to twelve tons of plutonium at SRS, the much larger plutonium stockpile at Pantex has continued to grow for the past twenty years due to continued weapons disassembly work dictated by nuclear weapons treaties with the former Soviet Union.

(2) The cracked pit was a Livermore National Laboratory-designed pit. Livermore had a reputation for designing weapon components that were more difficult to disassemble because they were only designed to be used.

Notes

Texas Monthly’s Disarmed and Dangerous is the best long-form journalism about Pantex in the 1990’s, the “boosters” and the “bashers,” and living near daily explosions.

Don Moniak worked for Serious Texans Against Nuclear Dumping (STAND) of Amarillo for four years. STAND was an informational and advocacy group monitored current and proposed work at the Pantex Plant and provided assistance to other communities affected by proposed radiochemical dumping plans. STAND also worked with PANAL and Peace Farm to produce The Nuclear Examiner, a monthly newsletter with a mailing list of 3,500 interested parties.







Editorials, Historical Perspectives, October 2023

Ninety-Seven Years Ago Today: The Lowman Lynchings

Most stories start at the beginning. A few are better told starting at the end.  The Lowman story almost defies such timelines and is perhaps best told starting somewhere in the middle, during the dark morning hours of Friday, October 8th, 1926.

It was between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m. on October 8, 1926, when Damon Lowman — who had received, only hours earlier, a verdict of not guilty in the murder of the Aiken County sheriff —  was forcibly removed from the Aiken Jail on Chesterfield Street, along with his sister, Bertha, and his cousin, Clarence, both of whom were expected to be cleared the next day of the same charge. The three were then driven to a pine thicket several miles down the road, where they were shot and killed by a mob of men numbering from 17 to 2,000, depending upon which account you believe.

This horrific crime would undergo investigations by grand juries and by the governor’s office, as well as the NAACP and the New York World newspaper, whose findings were published in newspapers across the country, drawing the national spotlight and condemnation onto the town of Aiken. For a few months in 1926, it seemed rare justice might be served but, ultimately, it came to nothing. The questions stopped being asked, and the articles trickled to none. The expectations for justice disappeared entirely. In their place emerged a particular silence that persists to this day.

I didn’t learn about the story until 2004. I heard about it from my father during one of our many long conversations during that last year of his life. He had first learned about it during the 1980s through his work with Aiken’s NAACP, in which he was a long-time member.

In the course of his research into the story, my father had interviewed Lowman family acquaintances, through whom he learned the Lowman story, which began some 18 months before the lynchings. He put the story to paper, starting with these words:

On a sunny Saturday morning on April 25, 1925, there were several women and children in the extended Lowman family working about the yard and house of their Monetta home, variously involved in their daily chores — cooking the noonday meal, bathing the baby, making soap and sweeping the yard.  Within minutes, this pastoral scene would be violently disrupted.

My father did fine justice to the story but was limited by the information available to him. Five years after his death, I found myself returning to the story, taking his draft and building on it. I wish he’d lived long enough to read the scholarly account by historian Elizabeth Robeson, who is, today, the consummate authority on this history. Or the stories written by Pam Durban. I know he would have been gratified.

Elizabeth Robeson’s work can be found in the chapter titled, “An Ominous Defiance,” in the 2008 book, “Toward the Meeting of the Waters: Currents in the Civil Rights Movement of South Carolina during the Twentieth Century,” available for purchase at USC Press. “An Ominous Defiance,” can be read here in Google Books.

A 2014 Bernice Bennet interview at Blog Talk Radio with Elizabeth Robeson and Patricia Lowman Pryor, granddaughter to Bertha Lowman, gives further detail to the background of the story including the histories leading up to and following the triple lynchings.

Aiken native Pam Durban, winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award, brought perspective to other characters in the Lowman story through her novel, “The Tree of Forgetfulness,” a compelling read that can be purchased at any major bookseller, including Barnes and Noble. Pam Durban also has a short piece titled, “A Southern Story” on this history that is worthy of finding.

Today, some ninety-seven years later, the Lowman family is remembered with the ongoing hope of establishing support for placing a historic marker at the site of the former jail on the grounds of the Aiken County Courthouse: a physical piece of evidence to say that, yes, this history was important and, yes, these three human souls remain worthy of our honor and remembrance.

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