Big Island residents sad to see smokestack torn down

BIG ISLAND — If you asked Big Island natives about the weather during much of the past century, a prediction may have come after a tilt of the head.

That’s because a 200-foot-tall, 300-ton brick smokestack that stands at Georgia-Pacific’s paper mill off U.S. 501 served as a visual symbol and barometer for the small Bedford County community since its construction in 1928. Residents and mill employees say the steam from the stack was a longtime source in foretelling precipitation.

“If the steam that comes out of the stack dips lower and hangs there, the community says that rain or snow is coming,” said Zoe Miles, a spokeswoman for the company, in a recent interview. 

That tradition is slowly coming down by the brick as a St. Louis firm demolishes the landmark, which is no longer in use. The destruction — placing scaffolds around the stack and chipping the bricks to fall inside the stack — began last month and is expected to last until late January if weather cooperates, the company announced recently.

The ongoing work is painful for some residents to watch.

“It broke my heart that they’re going to tear it down,” said Lori Byers, 75, who lives close by. “I know it’s no use to them, but there’s so much history there.”

Byers said she has lived in Big Island for most of her life with her late husband, William, and the stack has produced a lot of memories. She said her father, the late John Henry Hudson Jr., was involved in its construction.

“He laid the foundation with a horse and plow,” Byers said.

A producer of paper containerboard that started in 1891 beside the James River, the mill ceased operation of the smokestack in September when a new recovery boiler came online. It was originally used in connection with three boilers that powered machinery and since the late 1970s vented two smelters replaced by the new boiler, which company officials say reduces the mill’s emissions by 94 percent.

“It’s always sad to see a piece of history go away, but I understand the reason it has to come down,” said Tony Ware, a Big Island native and former county supervisor. “It’s just one of those things that’s been there your whole life. It will be different to look across the horizon and not see it there.”

Ware, 63, said he recalls seeing the smoke from the stack while going to school at a building on U.S. 501 next to Big Island Baptist Church.

That building formerly served as a high school and elementary school before it was torn down. Losing the stack is similar to the loss of the school, he said.

Ware worked at the mill to put himself through college, he said.

“It smelled like bread and butter,” Ware said of a sulfur-like scent the mill produced, adding, “if you lived in the community.”

Mark Simpkins, owner of Rivers Edge Café, has a clear view of the stack from his business on U.S. 501. He said a lot of his customers, many of whom are employed by the mill, have expressed sadness in seeing it come down.

“It’s going to be something that will be missed for a while,” Simpkins said. “A lot of people would love to have a brick out of it. You’ve got a lot of third-generation working there now.”