Crystal City, Missouri

Crystal City is a city lying along the Mississippi River in Jefferson County, Missouri, about 30 miles south of St. Louis. It had a population of 4,855 at the 2010 census.

History

The Crystal City area has been permanently settled since about 1803, when American pioneer Charley Conners erected a log cabin on the site. However, it did not become important until the 1860s, when geologists examined the soil at the mouth of Plattin Creek and found that it contained high levels of silica, which made it highly valuable for glass-making. A Detroit entrepreneur, Ebenezer Ward, founded the American Plate Glass Company in 1871--shortly thereafter purchased by the Crystal Plate Glass Company in St. Louis--which purchased the land and built several large furnaces for processing the sand into glass. The completion of a railroad link to St. Louis facilitated the factory's development, and in 1895 it became part of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, which updated and electrified its equipment. For some time thereafter, this was the largest plate glass plant in the world.

The community that developed around the factory to house and service its employees was initially known as "New Detroit," after Ebenezer Ward's hometown; however, the workers themselves favored the name "Crystal City," in honor of either the Crystal Plate Glass Company or the sand crystals themselves, and this name eventually stuck. It was a "company town," meaning that it was wholly owned by the factory, until 1906, when the company began allowing the sale of lots to residents; it was then incorporated in 1911, by which time it had a permanent population of about 1,200. The company continued to be a major presence in the town, though, taking responsibility for the construction of many of its churches and public buildings.

The local factory (officially known as "Crystal City Works Nine") continued to be a vitally-important glassmaking center through much of the 20th century, producing important components for American military aircraft during World War II. Beginning in 1965, it switched to the production of "float glass," which maintained its operations for another generation; in 1990, however, the factory was finally shut down and much of its equipment salvaged. Relatively few of its facilities are still in existence today. In recent years, there has been some discussion of building an iron-ore smelter on the site, but concerns of environmental pollution have aroused controversy on the subject.

Geography

Crystal City is located mostly along the east side of U.S. Routes 61-67 in east-central Jefferson County. Its exact coordinates are 38°13’18”N 90°22’57”W. It is directly adjacent to the cities of Herculaneum to the north and Festus to the west; it and Festus are so closely intermingled that they are sometimes referred to as the "Twin Cities." As the first partially-urbanized area encountered by northbound travelers in Jefferson County, the Festus-Crystal City area represents the southern limit of the St. Louis metropolitan area.

Most of Crystal City sits atop a low plateau that overlooks the west bank of the Mississippi River. Plattin Creek, whose sandy soil provided the material for glass-making operations, forms part of its southern boundary as it empties into the Mississippi. The town has a total area of 4.57 square miles, and an average elevation of 443 feet.