Hercules, California
Near Vallejo, California
Hercules is a town literally named after an explosive. The California Powder Works opened its dynamite plant on the East Bay shoreline in eighteen eighty-one, drawn by the remote location and deep-water access near Pinole. The company branded its product Hercules dynamite, and when the rail station got a name, it borrowed the brand.
In nineteen hundred the plant incorporated as a city. The du Pont family acquired the works in nineteen oh three, consolidating it into their national explosives empire. In thirty-eight years of operation at the site, fifty-nine workers were killed by accidental blasts.
The plant eventually shifted from dynamite to fertilizer production with explosives production ending in nineteen sixty-four and the fertilizer plant closing in nineteen seventy-six. Today Hercules is a quiet Bay Area suburb of about twenty-seven thousand, though the outline of the old powder works campus still shapes the town's street grid.
