Antioch

The potash capital of Nebraska, for as long as a war lasted

Antioch lies on Nebraska Highway 2 about 15 miles east of Alliance, in Sheridan County, out in the Sandhills of western Nebraska, and it borrowed its name from Antioch, Ohio. Before the First World War it was hardly a town at all; the year before the United States entered the war, one historian counted a schoolhouse, a church and a store. What it had was lakes. The Sandhills are dotted with shallow alkaline lakes, and their water carried potash, the potassium compound farmers need for fertilizer.

Before the war America imported its potash, chiefly from Germany, at around $8 to $10 a ton. The war cut the country off, potash for the cotton belt's fertilizer grew scarce, and the price climbed to $150 a ton. Two University of Nebraska chemistry graduates worked out how to separate potash from the alkaline lake water, and large-scale production began in 1916. Brine was pumped from the lakes to reduction plants beside the railroad, and Antioch, next to several of the biggest lakes, became the self-styled potash capital of Nebraska. By the spring of 1918 five plants were running there, the American, Nebraska, Alliance, National and Western, and the village had swelled to a town of about 2,000 people by the state marker's count, more than 5,000 by other accounts. The potash went into fertilizer, Epsom salts, soda and other products.

The plants stood on state land leased to private companies, and when people complained of favouritism, state officials defended the private deals by saying "our country needs the product for munitions." Potash was not used in munitions, but the explanation stuck.

The boom ended as fast as it began. After the war, French and German potash came back, cheaper to produce than anything the Sandhills could make, and the Nebraska industry collapsed. The last Antioch plant closed in 1921. The machinery went for scrap, the factories were pulled down for their building materials, and the company houses were demolished or carted away. Fewer than 25 people live in Antioch now.

What remains is concrete. The ruins of the reduction plants and pumping stations still stand beside Highway 2, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, and a state historical marker in a pull-out just west of town recalls the few years when this corner of the Sandhills was one of the most important potash regions in the nation.