Over the past few weeks, this column has highlighted some of the first mills that developed along Eighteen Mile Creek, first in the village, and later in the city of Lockport in the 19th century. As mentioned previously, to document all the mills and industries along Eighteen Mile Creek in the village/city of Lockport would take much time and research, so only a few of the larger and more well-known will be discussed today.
Once again, starting in Mill Tract No. 9, in the western end of the creek at the city limits, near the Indurated Fibre Co., was Cowles Electric Smelting & Aluminum Co. Opened in Lockport in 1885, this business was founded by Eugene and Alfred Cowles in Cleveland, Ohio, the year before they moved to Lockport to take advantage of the hydroelectric power generated by the mill races and a waterfall on Eighteen Mile Creek. It was also convenient to railroads and the Erie Canal.
Aluminum was a newly developed metal, created by “extracting a white powder called alumina from mined bauxite rock, and using intense electricity to separate pure aluminum from the oxygen locked inside it. Producing just one ton of aluminum requires roughly four tons of bauxite and massive amounts of electricity” (https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/how-is-aluminum-made/). This results in a silver-colored malleable metal. The process for doing this was expensive and not profitable. A year after the Cowles brothers brought their aluminum business to Lockport, another young man from Ohio, Charles Martin Hall, came here with a new process to extract pure aluminum from bauxite by using an internally heated electric furnace. By using this method, the price of pure aluminum went from $15 per pound to 50 cents per pound by 1890.
There was a falling out between the Cowles brothers and Hall and the latter left Lockport and founded Pittsburgh Reduction Co. (later ALCOA), which had two plants in Niagara Falls. The last of these closing in 1949 and is the site of now the Aquarium of Niagara and the Niagara Gorge Discovery Center. Cowles continued to manufacture aluminum here until 1938. Twenty years earlier, they began producing laundry detergent, and a few years later, chemicals to clean machinery, both of which were more profitable than aluminum.
In 1960, what was by then known as the Cowles Chemical Co., went out of business. Two years later, the property was sold to Van De Mark Chemical, a company owned by a prominent Lockport family. This business has produced industrial chemicals, including phosgene, a controversial compound used in plastics and pesticides. In March of 2026, it was announced that the Van De Mark Chemical Co. would close by the end of the year, ending a 66-year history in the city of Lockport.
In the early 20th century, going east along the creek, in Tract No. 6, adjacent to Mill St., was the Lockport Paper Co. Founded in 1884 by well-known Lockport men, including Charles and Wallace Keep, Timothy Ellsworth, J. Carl Jackson, George Moss, Willis Howes, Ambrose Beverly and Willian McRae. A new stone structure was built on what had been George Wells & Sons Sash & Blind Factory & Saw Mill. John Jack was named superintendent of the mill and continued in that capacity until shortly before his death in 1918.
Although there were other paper mills in the city, the Lockport Paper Co. was the largest and busiest. Like so many other industries, this enterprise did not limit itself to just one product; experimentation is what creates new products. In the 1910s, the company began manufacturing saturated felt, which was used in the roofing and automobile industry. A new brick building was constructed just for the manufacture of this material. In 1927, the Lockport Paper Co. merged with Beckman-Dawson, a roofing company in Chicago. Two years later, that company became part of the Flintkote Corporation, which also specialized in producing felt materials and already had several plants in cities across the United States. Flintkote expanded the factory and the footprint of the industrial complex. Like other companies located along Eighteen Creek, Flintkote used chemicals in the production of insulated felt and these substances generated waste that was hazardous to humans and the natural environment. In the 1960s, studies of the contamination of the creek began but by this time, Flintkote was near the end of its presence in Lockport. It was announced on July 1, 1971, that the company would close at the end of the year. Fires, strikes, vandalism and other economic factors contributed to the closing.
The last company to be discussed is one that has had many names over its long history. In 1889, a fire destroyed James Jackson’s “Lower Lumber Mill” in Mill Tract No. 5 on Eighteen Mile Creek at Mill and Olcott Streets and it was not rebuilt. The property later became the Traders’ Paper Mill in 1896. It merged with the United Box, Board & Paper Company in 1902, but operated under its own name until 1911. Like so many other mills along the creek, this one turned wood pulp into paper products, most notably cardboard. The plant was greatly expanded in 1910, extending its footprint down through the present-day Upson Park on the other side of Clinton Street. Between 1896 and 1981, the company had eight different, but similar names, making tracing its history a bit challenging.
Other companies along the creek had related names as well, many using the words Lockport, Paper, Board, Pulp and United in their titles. In 1969, the sixth name of this company, United Board Carton Corp., vacated what later became Upson Park, the buildings were torn down and development of the park began. That year, the business was purchased by the Upson Company and renamed Beaverboard, with the factory on Mill and Clinton Streets operating until 1978. The last name of the business that started as the United Box, Board & Paper Co. was Lockport Paperboard from 1978 to 1981. Other enterprises have occupied that location since then, but cannot be traced back to the original Traders’ Paper Mill in 1896.
The legacy of these companies continues to this day with the remediation of Eighteen Mile Creek that is currently taking place in the vicinity of Upson Park at Mill and Clinton streets.