An American Manufacturing Story: American LaFrance

 By Rachel Dworkin, archivist

Last week I spent two days cataloging a collection of 163 photographs of the final assembly process for an American LaFrance fire truck. Paul Walker, the company’s Director of Engineering from 1983 to 1985, had taken the photos in January 1985 in order to document the process and see how it might be improved. It wasn’t like a modern auto plant with robots on an assembly line. It was just a team of guys working together to assemble a series of pre-fabricated parts to make a fire truck. 

 

The LaFrance Manufacturing Company, founded by Truckson LaFrance, built its first fire engine in late 1873. In those early days, the company made all sorts of things: rail fence machines, cotton pickers, corn shellers, and even railroad locomotives. By the 1880s, however, it was strictly focused on fire engines. In 1903, the company merged with serval other companies to found the American LaFrance Fire Engine Company. For the next 80 years, the company was the premier name in American firefighting equipment and a major Chemung County employer. Then the company left Elmira in 1985 for points south. For the next few decades, it dwindled in size and quality before being picked apart by vulture capitalists. The once-proud company filed for bankruptcy in 2008 and ceased operation altogether in 2014.

At its peak, the American LaFrance plant covered over 48 acres on Elmira’s Southside. The plant included a machine shop, paint shop, warehouses and a main office, plus buildings for pump assembly, cab & body assembly, frame and ladder assembly, engine assembly, and truck assembly. In 1957, 975 people worked at the plant itself with another 1,200 employed as salesmen throughout the country. At the time, they had an annual payroll of $6,500,000 (approximately $73,974,857 today). They completed two trucks a day.

Given the company’s long history in Elmira, it’s no surprise we have quite a bit of it. Here’s a quick rundown of our collections related to the American LaFrance Company:

1.    Two motorized and one horse-drawn fire engines
2.    Collection of 150^th American LaFrance anniversary celebration material, 1982
3.     4.5 linear feet of American LaFrance promotional literature and product guides
4.     2 linear feet of Blazes, the American LaFrance newsletter from 1919-1928, 1940-1954
5.    2 linear feet of photographs of American LaFrance facilities, products, and employees
6.      2 linear feet of glass-plate negatives of American LaFrance products, 1890s-1910s
7.      Nearly 100 technical drawings of American LaFrance products
8.     Papers of former American LaFrance employees including Carol A. Hall, Marshall Cecce, and John Darrow

While none of this material is currently on display, most are available upon request during our regular research hours from 1pm to 5pm, Monday through Friday. The fire engines are stored off-site and researchers must make an appointment at least a week in advance if they want to see them.

The last American LaFrance truck produced in Elmira rolled off the line on June 28, 1985. Paul Walker had a photo of that too. Thank you to his son who donated it along with all the others. If you have American LaFrance material or stories you’d like to share, we would love to hear from you. Contact me at (607) 734-4167 ex. 207 or archivist@chemungvalleymuseum.org. 

Last fire truck from the Elmira American LaFrance plant & team who built it, June 28, 1985

 

Arbor Day at Quarry Farm

by Erin Doane, Senior Curator

On May 7, 1909, 225 boys descended upon East Hill overlooking Elmira. Over the course of the morning, they planted some 3,000 pine and spruce trees at Quarry Farm. The Star-Gazette called it the most substantial observance of Arbor Day ever conducted in this city.

Susan Crane and the corps of tree planting boys at Quarry Farm

Arbor Day was the brainchild of J. Sterling Morton, a newspaper editor in Nebraska City, Nebraska and secretary of the Nebraska Territory. In 1872, at a meeting of the State Board of Agriculture, he proposed a tree planting holiday to be called Arbor Day. The first celebration took place on April 10, 1872 and more than 1 million trees were planted in Nebraska that day. Arbor Day became a legal state holiday in Nebraska in 1885 and by 1920 more than 45 states and territories celebrated. Today, National Arbor Day is celebrated in all 50 states. The most common date for observance is the last Friday in April, but some states pick a different date for when the weather is best locally to plant trees.

The tradition of planting trees on Arbor Day became widespread in school in 1882. In 1909, trees were planted in school yards throughout Elmira and Chemung County. A group of over 200 boys chosen from the seventh and eighth grades of the local grammar schools was also invited to participate in tree planting on three acres of land set aside by Susan Crane at Quarry Farm. It was the first time this type of reforestation project had been done in Chemung County.

Students planting trees at Quarry Farm, 1910s

Dr. Arthur Booth, president of the Chemung County Forest, Fish and Game Protective Association, led the project. The Association purchased 4-year-old saplings from the New York State Nursery in Saranac Lake and had furrows plowed to the right depth so that everything was ready when the boys arrived. Susan Crane planted the first tree and Rev. S.E. Eastman planted the second. Then the boys went to work. One boy deposited moist earth and water on the spot where the tree was to be planted. The next boy placed a young tree in position. Then a third boy tamped the earth down around the seedlings. This efficient method allowed the boys to plant 3,000 trees by lunchtime.

Statistics at the time showed that a large percentage of trees planted by school children on Arbor Day died fairly quickly. Youngsters and their supervising adults either failed to plant the saplings properly in the first place or neglected them after they were in the ground. Following the May 1909 tree planting at Quarry Farm, a drought hit the region. Many were concerned that the new seedlings would not survive. That summer, a state forestry inspector went to Quarry Farm. He discovered that the percentage of trees living from the Arbor Day planting was even higher than that of the trees planted in the Adirondacks by trained forestry men. Of the thousands of trees planted at Quarry Farm, the loss was only 8 percent.

Tree planting at Quarry Farm, 1910s

Dr. Booth was rightly proud of the results. He was one of the prominent speakers at the annual Forest, Fish and Game Association convention in Syracuse that December. His topic was “An Arbor Day Tree Planting in Chemung County.” He also ordered 5,000 more young white pines from the state nursery to be set out by the school children of Elmira the next Arbor Day.

These tree plantings continued for the next few years. In addition to Quarry Farm, they expanded to other locations around Elmira including plots of land at the tuberculosis hospital on Underwood Avenue, near Bulkhead on the Southside, and by the reservoir on West Hill. In 1911, 30 grammar school girls joined the planting crew.

Students planting trees northwest of Elmira, 1926

After 1913, reports in the newspaper become sporadic, so it’s unclear if the Arbor Day tree plantings had truly become a yearly tradition. On May 2, 1924, the Star-Gazette reported that a large delegation of seventh and eighth grade students attended the Arbor Day tree planting on East Hill. On May 3, 1934, some 15,000 trees were planted by public school children around Elmira. In that same article, the reporter expressed doubt that the custom would continue the following year. Over the previous two years, so many trees had been planted by paid workers as part of the Civil Works Administration (a New Deal program created during the Great Depression) that there wasn’t much clear land left for new trees. 

Star-Gazette, May 4, 1934

In 1918, nine years after the first tree were planted at Quarry Farm, a forest fire destroyed about 1,500 of the young trees. The trees were about eight feet tall and were a source of pride for the Chemung County Fish and Game Protection Association. It was thought that the fire had been started by some boys.