Company Towns
The Washington Post's sad tale of a fire-truck plant shutting down in Nesquehoning, Pennsylvania — taking hundreds of jobs and the town's identity with it — illustrates the painful truth of company towns: Being so closely entwined with a single employer poses a big risk. While some company towns like Kohler, Wisconsin, and Hershey, Pennsylvania, still thrive, a majority either outlived the company that built them or went down with the company when its fortunes changed. While the residents of Nesquehoning have a strong labor market to fall back on, that's the exception, not the rule. The following are just a few of the cautionary tales from towns built during a long-gone gilded age.