Feb. 15--RAVENSWOOD, W.Va. -- Bill Knapp can remember when his hometown of Ravenswood had only one stoplight and spanned about four blocks.

"We were just a little country town and didn't have a whole lot," 72-year-old Knapp said. "We was country."

Knapp was a teenager in 1955 when Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corp., now Century Aluminum Co., broke ground five miles outside the town.

The company built a 220,000-ton, $200 million aluminum reduction plant that employed about 5,000 workers.

Within five years of breaking ground, the Jackson County farming community of about 1,200 more than tripled in size as workers from the across the nation descended on the town.

"Every tree that was in the yard was a fruit tree. Everybody had a milk cow and your neighbor would have helped you butcher the hog in the back yard," Knapp said. "That all changed when they come in."

Property values skyrocketed and any available home or apartment was rented out. A new high school and elementary school were built to accommodate the influx of families.

The town saw a 30 percent increase in retail sales from July to August 1956, according to a report from Kaiser Aluminum.

"They started building houses on the hills and around the town because we didn't have nothing back then, just pasture fields," Knapp said. "Where my home is now it [used to be] all cattle, now it's all housing."

By 1956, about 350 homes were built in the area, and a 56-unit apartment building was under construction.

The first day the plant opened its pre-operation office in Ravenswood, more than 2,000 applicants lined up along the streets of the small town to apply for a job, according to a 1956 report from Kaiser.

Applications continued to come in at rate of 1,000 per month, the majority of which were from outside Jackson County, according to the report.

"People came in from California and everywhere," Knapp said.

Knapp retired from the plant in 1997 after 37 years. He began working for Kaiser in 1960 at the age of 23.

"I was just walking around here and I put in for it and got the job and at the time it paid better than anywhere around," he said.

'Expanding a little'

In 1950, Jackson County was primarily a farming county with more than 2,000 farms, averaging about 115 acres a farm with an average family income of about $1,400.

The county had eight small manufacturing establishments that employed about 109 workers in 1950.

Prior to the plant's moving in, Ravenswood "was a quiet town and pretty much self sufficient," Richard Ward said.