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Posted On: June 17th 2025, 11:44 am
The Piedmont Pulp and Paper Company was founded in 1888 by William Luke, a Scottish industrialist. The mill at the time was state of the art. While most paper in the 19th century United States was made with linen, this was one of the first mills in the United States to produce paper from wood pulp.
The mill at what would become Luke, MD was build to take advantage the vast timber properties that were being exploited in Grant, Garrett, Tucker, and Randolph Counties. The development of wood pulp paper mills was a boom to those timber interests. Now trees which weren’t commercially viable as timber could be harvested as pulpwood, encouraging the practice of clear cutting. Paper production was also a principal source of chemical pollution in the Potomac, a fact that would draw considerable attention from downstream communities as far away as Washington.
In 2019, after more than a century of production, reduced demand, outsourcing, and corporate greed abruptly closed the mill, laying off 675 workers and cutting the surrounding communities off from critical infrastructure.
Today, the facility sits in piles of sorted aluminum and steel, ready to be shipped off in freight cars and trucks, presumably to an eastern recycling facility. In Luke, the postcolonial condition is in motion. Here, even the means of production have become a resource to be extracted.
Historical imagery is from the West Virginia Collection at WVU.
The mill at what would become Luke, MD was build to take advantage the vast timber properties that were being exploited in Grant, Garrett, Tucker, and Randolph Counties. The development of wood pulp paper mills was a boom to those timber interests. Now trees which weren’t commercially viable as timber could be harvested as pulpwood, encouraging the practice of clear cutting. Paper production was also a principal source of chemical pollution in the Potomac, a fact that would draw considerable attention from downstream communities as far away as Washington.
In 2019, after more than a century of production, reduced demand, outsourcing, and corporate greed abruptly closed the mill, laying off 675 workers and cutting the surrounding communities off from critical infrastructure.
Today, the facility sits in piles of sorted aluminum and steel, ready to be shipped off in freight cars and trucks, presumably to an eastern recycling facility. In Luke, the postcolonial condition is in motion. Here, even the means of production have become a resource to be extracted.
Historical imagery is from the West Virginia Collection at WVU.
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