Cairo, pronounced care-o, is a town in Ritchie County, West Virginia. It is a small town that runs along the North Fork of the Hughes River. The North Bend Rail Trail, formerly the B&O railroad, runs through the center of town. It was incorporated in 1895 and named Cairo for the city in Egypt because of its presence of water and fertile land. The population is around 300 and has an area just under half a square mile.
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| Downtown |
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| View from across the Hughes River |
There were four marble factories in Cairo in two locations from 1945 to 1987. The first was the Cairo Novelty Company. In 1944, Oris G. Hanlon filed for a patent on his new marble making machine. He had planned to go into business with his brother-in-law Bill Heaton and in 1946, the two built a factory on the east side of Cairo. Following a mysterious falling out between the two, Heaton took over the factory and Hanlon built a new one on the other side of town and so the Cairo Novelty Company was born.
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| Cairo Novelty Company - demolished in early 90s |
Hanlon’s machine had its problems but when it was working, it produced marbles at a faster rate than any other marble machine during that time. They made two, three, and four color swirls, clearies and solid color marbles. In 1950, a devastating flood severely damaged many areas of the town, including the Cairo Novelty Company. Hanlon tried to rebuild, but the destruction had taken its toll and he had to close his doors in 1952.
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| Heaton Agate Company |
Heaton, who had taken over the first factory that he and Hanlon had built, continued making marbles. Heaton Agate Company produced both swirls and cat’s eye marbles. Most swirls were two colors but rare three color swirls have been found and attributed to blending and changing between runs. In 1971, Heaton retired and sold the company to Clayton Bogard.
The company then became C.E. Bogard & Sons. In 1983, Jerry and Jack Bogard became the owners, changing the name to The Bogard Company. Eventually Jack took on sole ownership. On the advice of Heaton, they concentrated on making Chinese checker marbles. They also made cat’s eyes marbles. After a few years, Jack Bogard pursued the prospects of industrial marble making because there was less competition than in the toy marble market. However, there was not a large market for industrial marbles so Jack Boggard created his own. He was a large part of aerosol can makers using glass marbles for agitators instead of metal balls.
In the mid-1980s, natural gas prices doubled. This of course made the costs of running the marble factory rise, causing Bogard to move his operation to an old farm in Nutter, WV, near Cairo. He made efforts to make the business more fuel efficient but was unsuccessful. In 1986, he relocated to Reno, Ohio, where gas prices were more affordable. The company was reorganized in 1987, complete with the new name JABO, Inc, and in 1988 the Cairo property was sold at auction in 1988 to settle past Bogard Company debts.
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| Cairo Novelty Company |
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| Heaton Agate Company |
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| C.E. Bogard & Sons |
There were four marble factories in Cairo in two locations from 1945 to 1987. The first was the Cairo Novelty Company. In 1944, Oris G. Hanlon filed for a patent on his new marble making machine. He had planned to go into business with his brother-in-law Bill Heaton and in 1946, the two built a factory on the east side of Cairo. Following a mysterious falling out between the two, Heaton took over the factory and Hanlon built a new one on the other side of town and so the Cairo Novelty Company was born. 
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Great information on Cairo's marble making history.
ReplyDeleteI like your tie-in with how the town got its name. Interesting history of marbles and I love the marble gallery! Had no idea there were so many different kinds of them - makes me want to collect them to show my students!
ReplyDeleteVery nice. I'm really looking forward to seeing how marbles are made.
ReplyDeleteAh - there are some serious factual errors in this: they moved to Nutter Farm not to a farm in Nutter, WV.
ReplyDeleteThe flood did not destroy the Cairo Novelty nor damage the building- just made a mess- and the reason for closing was not specifically the flood but a glut of marbles made by a multitude of other marble factories in Ritchie County WV (where Cairo is located) ....PLEASE if you wish to cite these kinds of details give your source-
AND that is not quite how our town got it's name- sigh
ReplyDeletePlease... don't leave us hanging... do tell.
DeleteBOTH factory building are now demolished May 2019
ReplyDeleteWhat company was the one that was just torn down and had the dig a few days ago? .... the one across from the bike/general store
DeleteBogard
DeleteAh yes! C E Bogard and Sons Agate factory.
ReplyDeleteI realize this is an older post, but you might enjoy reading my experience if you stumble on it...
I remember it like it was yesterday. I'm 60 now(it's 2019), but back then I was a young teen in the 70's. My grandmother lived on Thorn Avenue in Cairo. We visited her for a few days from New Jersey. (My mother grew up in Cairo and went to Cairo HS on top of the hill.)
So while visiting one summer night, my grandmother told me to go over to the marble factory (just down the end of the street) and see them making them. They wouldn't mind showing me. So it did. True, the man working there was very friendly an didn't mind at all.
He handed me a pair of eye protecting dark tinted glasses and I looked into the furnace. I saw the glowing pool of melted liquid glass. He would shovel broken glass into the furnace from a pile delivered to the factory in their back lot.
After that, we went inside to see the machine that was making the marbles. A large extruder looking machine was dropping small hot glass blobs (from the melted pool chamber I just saw) onto a parallel pair of rotating screws. The screws rotated to form the molten glass into small glass marble balls while they traversed down the screws. Each ball eventually fell off the screws and onto a trough where they rolled down a fair distance to cool down to a point where they wouldn't stick to the other marbles. They then dropped into a bucket at the end of the trough. You could still see the core of the marbles sightly red from the heat while they were in the metal bucket.
I asked why they were clear, and not cat eyed. He said, these marbles are for spray paint cans. They're not the ones for kids. He told me how these are the marbles you hear go "clink, clink, clink" when you shake a can of spray paint. It's what they put in the can to help mix the paint when you shake it.
I wish I had a time machine to go back in time to see it again. :)
Are we allowed to dig around still? My sister and I were in WV last weekend from Cincy. We had so much fun digging around Marble King-across tracks. We would so much enjoy finding other types of marbles in honor of our dad who was a player. He passed away almost two years ago and it is a way to keep him in our hearts.
ReplyDeleteI visited our Chapman cousins there as a child. I remember them holding me upside down by the ankles and lowering me into large barrels to dig out muddy marbles. It was after the flood in 1950. Grandma made me a feedsack material marble bag for mine.
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