Clay Smoking Pipes

According to local tradition, residents of this region were making clay smoking pipes here by the mid-eighteenth century. By 1879 the Pamplin Pipe Factory was in operation. Machines there were used to mold clay into pipes, which were then allowed to dry. After drying, the pipes were fired in a kiln, cooled, and shipped in barrels throughout the world. By 1919 the clay pipe industry had peaked, but the factory supplied a national and international market well into the 1930s. The factory may have produced one million pipes a month at the height of its output. The factory closed by 1952.