University of Virginia Library

Miscellaneous

A third county business expanded its plant just in time to take a
prominent part in the war effort. Founded in 1929, the Crozet Cold
Storage Corporation was merely a warehouse for Albemarle-grown
fruit until 1941. In that year the company added quick-freezing
facilities to process foods. The outbreak of hostilities made this plant
even more valuable than had been expected. In the four years, 1941–
1944, it stored 155,000 bushels of Albemarle apples and 35,000
bushels of local peaches. In addition it was pressed into service to
process 26,000 bushels of snap beans for the government. To supply
so many “snaps” was far beyond the capacity of Albemarle farmers,
and beans came from Tennessee and North Carolina to be processed
at Crozet. The plant was also called upon to freeze and store five
million pounds of poultry. Another function it performed was to
serve as a sort of “staging area” for frozen foods. Sometimes refrigerator

cars loaded with such foods as meat, eggs, and lard for overseas
consignment arrived in the East when no shipping space was
available. In such cases the cars had to be routed to a plant like the
one at Crozet where food could be stored until shipping was available.[23]

Another firm with a big part in the war effort was the Barnes Lumber
Corporation, which filled government contracts amounting to
nearly $2,000,000. It supplied to the Army and Navy its peacetime
products, oak flooring and millwork, as well as thousands of
feet of special-purpose lumber. This company made crates for antiaircraft
guns, boxes for ammunition, and wooden pallets to expedite
the handling of goods in warehouses and shipping. Its most curious
product was a large quantity of wooden discs, designed to counteract
magnetic mines. Suffering from the usual problems, the company
saw its workers decline from 360 in 1941 to 220 in 1944, even
though it sent out its own trucks to bring the employees to their jobs.[24]

At least three other city firms turned out war goods. The Charlottesville
Lumber Company used its experience in manufacturing
window sash and door frames to produce prefabricated barracks and
radar buildings as well as crates for one and one-half ton trucks.[25]
The Essex Corporation turned out thousands of fountain pens, while
L. H. Wiebel, Inc., manufactured 22,000,000 wooden insulator pins
and brackets for the telephone lines laid by the United States Signal
Corps all around the world. Even the blind were able to do their
part. The superintendent of the Virginia Workshop for the Blind
reported that his sightless workers in five years had produced 118,150
brooms and 108,952 mattresses for the use of the Army and Navy.