Eagle-Picher in Joplin: mining, slag and insulation
Industrial history can reconnect a product memory to the place where materials were developed and packed.
A mining and industrial setting
A 1939 industrial chemistry article describes the Eagle Picher Lead Company at Joplin, Missouri, developing a process during the Depression to use industrial slag to manufacture specialty insulation. The article connects the insulation business to the region’s mining and smelting economy.
A manufacturing specification twenty years later
The 1959 Eagle-Picher Insulation Division specification explicitly names the Joplin plant, provides package construction and printing instructions, and identifies products manufactured for North American Refractories. This is a concrete manufacturing connection; it does not establish every later product’s plant of origin.
What a family might remember
- Joplin, the lead-and-zinc mining district, slag piles or mineral-wool production.
- Insulation Division paperwork, product-bag printing, mixing directions and 50-pound sacks.
- Names such as Super 66, One-Cote, Staz-On and Unicote appearing in different records.
Read the original records
1939 industry article ↗ · 1959 manufacturing specification ↗
← Eagle-Picher historical library · Original historical documents →
Start with what you remember
Names, packages, dates, coworkers, equipment and photographs can help reconstruct a work history.