Gopher Ordnance Works
Gopher Ordinance Works was located off of County Road 46 near Coates and Rosemount. It was first opened in 1943 as a gunpowder production plant. The plant was closed soon after the end of World War II. There are some remains still at the original site which is visible from Highway 52 and County Road 46.
A location is chosen
After the government decided it needed a place to open up another gunpowder factory, they chose Dakota County in East Central Minnesota as their prime spot to put up such a factory, specifically, the city of Rosemount. They soon evicted farmers on 11,000 acres of farmland so that they could build Gopher Ordinance Works, which consisted of 858 buildings.
General Plant Information
Gopher Ordinance could hold aprox. 3,000 employees, however, most of the employees were not hired off site and had already worked in the defense industry. The plant was operated by DuPont. The production lines at Gopher were completed in 1943 and idled until 1944 when the government requested the plant begin production and create three additional production lines. The gunpowder being produced at the plant was being used for Navy Artillery Shells. The smokestacks were for boiling water that was used to manufacture the gunpowder. The large T-Walls were part of solvent recovery houses. The process involved lots of volatile material.
Advertising
The plant was unable to get employee's easily, so they ran ad's in local newspapers. One such ad picture'd a female saying, "If you can run a vaccuum cleaner, you can do my war job at Gopher".