Blackwell's steam powered heart lives on in Pawnee

Hiss. Puff. Puff. Swoosh. Tick-tock. Click. Click. Click.

Sounds abound as vapors waft through a large, black steam engine that sits in a barn in Pawnee, approximately 60 miles southeast of Blackwell.

As tall flywheel turns and a long piston moves back and forth, an integral part of Blackwell’s history comes to life. An Allis Chalmers Corliss-type steam engine – one of two that generated electricity for the now-defunct Blackwell Zinc Company – lives on as a permanent display at one of the state’s largest annual tractor shows, the Oklahoma Steam Threshing and Gas Engine Association’s annual show in early May.

On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, spectators marveled at the massive, black steam engine, which still functions as it did when it powered the world’s largest zinc smelter. While it no longer generates electrical power, the engine is still a unique sight to see, volunteers say.

“It’s very neat to have one that’s running and in steam here,” said Wes Kinsler, one of the volunteers who operates the engine.

HISTORY OF THE ENGINE

Engineers with Allis Chalmers, which produced farm tractors and other agricultural equipment, designed the engine in 1912, Kinsler said. Workers assembled it at the Allis Chalmers manufacturing plant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and shipped it to Blackwell. The engine was installed on the smelter property in 1914, and it was put into operation in 1916, one year before the smelter opened at full operating capacity.

The zinc smelter was at one time the largest in the world. According to volunteers, the smelter produced up to 20% of the world’s cadmium and zinc in 1965. It had more than 900 employees and an annual payroll of almost $5 million.

The smelter closed in 1975 when the AMAX Corporation, which owned the smelter, moved production of its goods to a newer facility in Missouri. The company donated the steam engine to the steam threshing organization. Volunteers disassembled the 110-ton engine and trucked it to Pawnee. In 1976, they put it back into operation as a permanent, functional display on the grounds of the tractor show.

While volunteers didn’t obtain the second engine, the organization did acquire other steam-powered equipment – including a fire suppression system – from the smelter.

WHAT IT DID

The two steam engines provided all the electrical power needed for the smelter, Kinsler said. When the engines produced more electrical power than the smelter needed at a given time, the smelter sold the excess electricity to the City of Blackwell, Kinsler said.

The engine is rated to produce 350 kilowatts, and so was its sister engine. Kinsler said each engine would have had a crew of three or four workers. Workers used natural gas to fire boilers that generated steam for the engines. Natural gas was a good fuel to use for the engine, volunteers said.

Smelter officials chose to put the smelter in Blackwell because natural gas deposits were plentiful in the area.

Natural gas was also used to power the smelter’s furnaces, which melted metals.

“That was the whole reason the smelter was built at Blackwell,” Kinsler said. To start the engine, workers have to move the engine’s flywheel and allow steam to fill the engine’s cylinders. They also have to oil moving parts of the engine.

Once steam pressure builds up, the engine takes about 20 minutes to start. And once it’s fired up, its giant flywheel spins for show-goers to see.

VOLUNTEERS WHO RUN IT

Kinsler attended the tractor show for years before he joined the engine crew in 2013. He’s researched its history and hopes to help preserve it for years to come, he said. “I just like being able to see it operate, and also being able to see the reaction from other people when they walk in and say, ‘I had no idea we had something like this in Oklahoma.’”

That response is warranted, Kinsler said, because steam engines such as this one weren’t common in the Sooner State. By the time of Oklahoma’s 1907 statehood, steam engines like the Corliss were already becoming obsolete.

“Most of my family is from the Ohio area, and this sort of thing was so common it was taken for granted,” Kinsler said. “Out here, Oklahoma is young enough that they kind of got into this on the tail-end of this technology.

“These engines were built all over the world and really were responsible for creating our modern world,” Kinsler said. “With an engine like this, you had an engine that was efficient enough that you could build a factory away from a flowing river, and you didn’t have to use a water turbine or a water wheel to operate your machinery. You could build it any place that was convenient.”

Kinsler said former smelter employees often stop in at the steam show and talk with the engine crew.

“We get a lot of people that come and said they had no idea this thing was powering the plant,” he said. All these years later, the engine has a new Blackwell tie. Kyle Muret, a Blackwell native, helped run the steam engine Sunday at the request of his friend, Kinsler.

“This is my first day here,” he said. Kinsler taught Muret how to work on the engine. Muret, who now lives and works in Stillwater, said he might work on the engine more in the future. “It’s good to help keep it alive,” he said.

Harold Swartz, a maintenance worker at an Enid hospital, also helps run the engine. He grew up on a farm, and he said he feels right at home running the steam engine.

“It was kind of a combination of my vocation and the heritage that I had that got me interested,” he said. Swartz said he finds joy in bringing the engine back to life. “To me, it’s the fact that we’re going back 100 years and reenacting what it was like a century ago,” he said