At Wapwallopen, the powder was ferried across the river where it was picked up by the Pennsylvania Railroad.  The powder was dangerous to carry, and it was put on a car which was isolated from the rest of the train by one or more empty cars.  Once on the railroad, the powder was carried off to its destination.

The engineers of the powder mills designed the buildings with the expectation that there would be explosions.  Then, as now, buildings were expensive.  The engineers wanted to save as much of the building as possible, so they designed each building which might be host to an explosion with three masonry walls; the remaining wall and the roof were made of corrugated iron.  The iron roof and wall acted as a “safety-relief valve” when an explosion occurred.  They would blow off in time for all the blast to be directed away from the other building and into the hillside or toward the creek, where little harm would be done.  After the dust had settled, the workers would gather up the iron panels, hammer them straight again and then re-install them in their former location.  So, the mills were ready to run in the shortest possible time and with the lowest repair cost.  It is interesting that E. I. DuPont brought this concept form mill construction with him from France, where it was incorporated in gunpowder manufacture even before the American Revolution!  The concept of rupture panels is applied today in many forms of technology. 

Did the mills ever explode and was anyone ever injured . . .or even killed?  The answer to all is, “Yes!”.  Everyone who worked in these powder mills knew of the danger.  Some of the buildings had sliding boards to the outside such that the men could get out in a hurry.  Unfortunately, explosions often took place in spite of precautions.  In approximately 1888, four men were killed in an explosion which shattered windows in Powder Glen and around the countryside.  There is a monument to those four at the Mt. Zion Church in Briggsville, where the remains of the four are buried.  My Grandfather, E. E. Grover, told of driving a team of white horses and seeing a flash of flame, whereupon he jumped into a ditch just before the shock wave of the explosion and the flames reached him.  The poor horses, however, were not so fortunate, and they were badly burned.  My Grandfather was unhurt, although terribly frightened.

Mrs. Nelly Diehl told me of a time when she was a child (i.e., 1888).  She was playing on the floor of the Everard home (Will Everard was her father) in the parlor (this home is now owned and occupied by the Bogart family).  During the instant of the large explosion referenced above, the door of their home was blown right off its hinges!  Some of the splinters were blown across the room with such force that they injured