OpenStreetMap (new tab)

Google Map (new tab)

The Giant Powder Company became the first American licensee of Alfred Nobel's patent for dynamite in the mid-1860s. Dynamite would prove a boon in the American West as a way for miners and construction crews to move large masses of rock; this plant first operated on 03/19/1868. The ill-fated facility produced dynamite for about a year and a half when an explosion leveled it and surrounding buildings on 11/26/1869. A second facility was erected elsewhere, and this, too, blew up. A third, more successful plant opened on San Pablo Bay at Point Pinole in the Bay Area.

Demolished; the City of San Francisco's Glen Valley Park later was built on the site of explosion.