Hamilton, OH: 1893-2012 Champion Paper Company

(Satellite, the buildings along the river look like they have been repurposed.)

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I knew there were paper mills down in Alabama and in Wisconsin where there are trees. But I don't know of many trees in western Ohio. This plant made coated paper. Because of paperless offices and the death of many magazines, the market for coated paper has shrunk considerably.

Like the steel companies, competition from Asian companies was also a problem. [AbandonedOnline]

It turns out that Champion was founded here because a "Paper Valley" had already developed along the Great Miami River and Miami & Erie Canal with 30 mills in operation at its peak. Originally, Peter Thompson, the founder, bought paper from the other mills and coated it. "(Much of the equipment for the plant was sourced from Black & Clawson at North Second and Vine streets. 4 Black & Clawson was founded by Frank X. Black and Linus P. Clawson as a machine shop in 1873 and grew into a paper machine fabrication plant by the end of the century. Machines were shipped worldwide which enabled the company to expand outside of Hamilton by 1926. The Hamilton operations closed in the early 1970s.)" [AbandonedOnline]

I guess there were a lot of trees in the 1800s that were cleared for farmland, and the canal made it easy to ship them to the mills.

In 1902, a paper mill opened so that they could coat their own paper. "On January 6, 1906, Thomson’s son-in-law, Reuben B. Robertson, Sr., founded the Champion Fibre Company in Canton, North Carolina to supply the Hamilton mills with wood pulp. Champion Fibre had acquired over 50,000 acres of forest for raw material, and constructed an uncoated paper mill in Hamilton. By 1910, the Champion factories in Hamilton were the largest in the world with a daily capacity of 525,000 pounds of paper." [AbandonedOnline]

1900 March - according to an article in the American Printer, there were 21 paper-coating mills in the United States and Champion was "the youngest and also the largest" and "twice as big as the second mill, and larger in capacity than all the others combined."

[Laurelcourt]

The plant was served by a spur off the B&O.

1955/56 Hamilton Quad @ 24,000