File:NASA Demolition of the Plum Brook Ordnance Works (grc-2003-00829).jpg

English: Engineers from the Army’s Ravenna Arsenal and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) burn down a large Plum Brook Ordnance Works building in the summer of 1963 to provide room for new NASA test facilities. The Ordnance Works was established near Sandusky, Ohio in early 1941 to create explosives for World War II. It contained approximately 600 buildings and three large acid areas for creating the powder. The roughly 9000-acre facility shut down after the war and remained idle for nearly a decade. The NACA Lewis in Cleveland, Ohio leased 500 acres of the site in 1955 to build its 60-megawatt test reactor. The establishment of NASA in 1958 provided extra funding and new missions for the center. NASA Lewis needed additional facilities to test rocket engines and their components. The large unused tracts of land at Plum Brook were perfect for the dangerous fuels work. In 1958 NASA acquired an additional 3,100 acres to build a multi-facility Rocket Systems Laboratory. In the fall of 1959 NASA requested the use of another 3,500 acres for additional facilities. NASA acquired the remaining property in 1963. Initially, NASA let the Ordnance Works structures stand. As more and more acres were acquired, however, they began to destroy a large number of the buildings. Experts from the Ravenna Arsenal were brought in to decontaminate the facilities. This decontamination ranged from a wash down to burning the structure to the ground, seen here. In 1961 a local companies were hired to raze all unusable structures and dismantle three acid plants. A number of the structures were retained and remain at Plum Brook today.