The Heritage Center: Remembering Clark County’s history of builders

The Heritage Center s galleries not only tell the stories of small cottage industries that supplied the needs of early settlers, but they show how the growth of local industry supplied the needs of the nation, highlighting hundreds of local companies. Farm machinery may have reigned supreme, but success in that industry allowed for the development of other industries from automobiles, ornamental ironwork, washing machines and water turbines, to tires, trucks, brooms, lawn mowers, and steam rollers. Growth of new product lines was so great that the U.S. Patent Office for the region and many patent attorneys located in Springfield. From pianos to washing machines, from electric fans to sewing machines, Clark County built it all. Photo contributed by Clark County Historical Society.