Howes and Vietnam

 

The history of the Howes Leather Company tannery in Frank, West Virginia, represents a classic Appalachian trajectory: a booming 20th-century economic engine that left behind a complex, persistent environmental legacy.

The intersection of military necessity, heavy chemistry, and the local ecosystem centers precisely on the transition from traditional vegetable tanning to heavy metal processing.

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The Military Shoe Leather Contract & Chromic Oxide

For the vast majority of its operation from 1904 onward, the Frank Tannery (under Howes Leather Company) was famous for producing high-quality vegetable-tanned shoe sole leather. Utilizing the abundant, tannin-rich bark of local oak, hemlock, and chestnut trees, it grew to become one of the largest sole leather tanneries in the world.

However, the escalation of the Vietnam War created a critical logistical crisis for the United States military:

• The Problem: American soldiers operating in the intense heat, swamps, and constant moisture of Vietnam found that their standard-issue combat boots were molding, mildewing, and rotting off their feet within weeks.

• The Solution: Howes Leather developed a specialized chrome re-tanning process. Hides were first tanned using the traditional vegetable method for structural integrity and then treated with chromic oxide (chromium salts).

• The Military Contract: This specific chemical formulation rendered the leather highly resistant to fungal growth, rot, and moisture degradation. Howes secured a lucrative, exclusive government contract to supply this re-tanned leather for the insoles of all U.S. military combat boots and dress shoes, shipping the treated leather to major military footwear manufacturers like Carolina Shoe.

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The Chemistry: Chromium-3 vs. Chromium-6

In industrial leather tanning, Trivalent Chromium (Chromium-3) is the standard agent used in the "chrome-tan" process. It is relatively stable and far less toxic than its notorious counterpart.

The presence of Hexavalent Chromium (Chromium-6)—the toxic, carcinogenic form of the metal—in tannery waste typically arises from two vectors:

1. Chemical Oxidation: If the pH, temperature, or chemical oxidation levels are not precisely controlled during the manufacturing or waste-treatment phases, benign Chromium-3 can oxidize into dangerous Chromium-6.

2. Impure Feedstocks: Historical industrial processes often utilized chromium formulations that contained trace or residual amounts of hexavalent chromium before modern environmental regulations mandated strict chemical purity.

For decades, the massive volume of process water and "tanning liquor" used at Frank was routed into large industrial waste lagoons designed to hold the effluent until river flows were high enough to dilute the discharge. Over time, these heavy metals settled deeply into the local soil, sludge, and shallow groundwater tables.

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Present Environmental Impact (2026)

Following the tannery’s closure in 1994 due to synthetic competition and stricter environmental regulations, the site became a major regional liability. Today, in 2026, the environmental footprint of the old Howes Leather facility is actively being addressed through federal intervention, though the chemical legacy remains a serious concern.

1. The Brownfields Cleanup Initiative

The site—now known as the East Fork Industrial Park—is a designated EPA Brownfield. Backed by federal funding via the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, a targeted cleanup strategy is currently underway to remediate the 165 Industrial Park Road location.

2. Contaminant Profile

Soil and hydrogeological assessments have confirmed that the ground beneath the former tannery is contaminated with a complex cocktail of historical industrial waste:

• Heavy Metals: Residual chromium (including localized risks of hexavalent chromium transformation in soil) and other processing metals.

• Co-contaminants: Volatile organic compounds (VOCs), semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs), and localized pockets of PCBs from old electrical infrastructure.

3. Groundwater Risks & Monitoring

The current primary environmental concern is the potential migration of these heavy metals into the shallow groundwater table and the adjacent East Fork of the Greenbrier River. Because the East Fork is historically a sensitive aquatic ecosystem, present-day remediation efforts are heavily focused on:

• Installing and monitoring a comprehensive grid of groundwater monitoring wells.

• Generating continuous groundwater stability reports to ensure sub-surface plumes of chromium do not leach into surface waters.

• Ensuring the old waste impoundment areas are stabilized so that heavy rains do not cause runoff or flood-induced leaching of the legacy tannery sludge.

The remediation process remains an open, multi-year effort to safely transition a site that once shod the feet of the U.S. military into a safe, reusable economic zone for Pocahontas County.