The center of all this production was surrounded by the manufacture of tin in various forms. Ironically, it was the abundance of natural gas, even then, that drove the creation of several tin mills in west Waynesburg, then called Buchanan. Wanting to keep some of the gas close to home, the production of tin caught the attention of local business investors.
The fall of 1900 was the start of the tin industry in what is now Bucktown with the opening of the Waynesburg Sheet, Tin and Forge Mills. A year later the W.H. Griffiths Company Sheet Tin Mills were in operation. There was even an offshoot company that began doing business in 1906. The Waynesburg Pressed Steel Company, believed to have been located on the back half of the current Wayne Lumber building, began producing shovels.
With hundreds working the production of tin in west Waynesburg a great need for housing existed. It wasn’t long before a group of local businessmen joined forces to lay out 300 lots for the construction of homes on what was left of the former Buchanan Farm property.
For the times the wages in the mills were on par with the wages in coal mines today. For an eight-hour shift the average wages in the tin mills were $35-$40 for rollers, $20-$25 for heaters and $15-$20 for helpers. Many of the higher paid workers in the mills bought the expensive clothing and high-end cars of the day, according to G. Wayne Smith’s, “History of Greene County Pennsylvania.”
The proximity of the Waynesburg and Washington Railroad certainly didn’t hurt the tin industry. However, many news articles mention the need and desire for a standard gauge railroad for passenger travel in the area.
A local shoe dealer, T.J. Huffman, prior to leaving on a family trip to California by rail, told a reporter that he had high hopes to return to Waynesburg from California via the Wabash.
“We are more hopeful each day that will be a reality soon,” he added. “And, when we get a road on which we can leave Waynesburg either to the south or north, then the outside world will commence to realize our greatness and we will loom up on the map.”
Unfortunately, it was during this time period that the mills began to suffer some financial setbacks. In 1907 the W.H. Griffiths mills were in receivership and sold. The W.H. Griffiths mills operated briefly after being sold but closed for good in February of 1909.
Two years later the Waynesburg Sheet, Tin and Forge Mills had also ceased operations, but quickly reopened when it was purchased by the Osterberg Tin Plate Company. They lasted until 1914 when they, too, shut down the mills. A final effort to resume tin production at the plant happened in 1917. American Steel Co. purchased the mills and opened them with a fairly decent run until they became bankrupt in 1927, closing for the final time. Waynesburg Pressed Steel officially closed in 1920 after an 18-month period of being idle.
However, in the heyday of Bucktown’s industrial operations more than 70 tons of tin was being produced a day. The American Steel Co. had an output of nearly 6,500 tons of tin a year in their final years of production. The Waynesburg Pressed Steel Co. was shipping shovels to California, Colorado and other western cities upon great demand. And, there was even a pressed box company that made the boxes to ship items from Bucktown across the country.
It isn’t clear what brought down these businesses, perhaps a combination of bad business practices and the Great Depression.
For a time after the mills all closed, the former Waynesburg Sheet, Tin and Forge Mills buildings housed parts of the narrow gauge Waynesburg and Washington Railroad that had run through Bucktown. The line stopped running in the area in the 1930s and eventually the parts of the railroad were removed and the final buildings of the tin era were all but gone.
The remnants of the Waynesburg Sheet, Tin and Forge Mills were purchased by local Belgian horse breeder and auctioneer, Charles Orndorff and partners in 1936. Today it is known as the Pennsylvania Livestock Auction and operates each Thursday under the current ownership of the Friend family.
