Felton Fuse Factory

By Lisa Robinson

In 1869, a fuse factory was erected on Zayante Creek in Felton. The company was incorporated as Lake Superior and Pacific Fuse Company and the principal stockholders were the inventors and patentees Richard Uren, Thomas Dunstone, and Joseph Blight. The plant was also known as the Eagle Fuse-works.

The machinery was driven by three 5-hp water wheels. Water was supplied to the factory by a flume from a reservoir fed by water from Bean Creek. The main building was three stories high with a two story wing. The wheels, pulleys, shafts, etc. that drove the fuse making machinery were on the lower floor; the actual fuse making on the second and third.

The fuse making process was kept a tightly held secret. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported: “We did not see the second story of the works in operation, as that portion of the building is private and sacredly confidential, the various processes and machinery being a profound secret, never divulged by the inventors and patentees.”

Jute, one of the raw materials, was imported from Dundee, Scotland. The finished product, which was “used all over the Pacific Coast,” was also exported to Australia and Central America.

In 1871, the factory production capacity was increased to 120,000 feet of fuse per week. After Thomas Dunstone’s death in 1878, his son-in- law William H. Talbot took over the operation of the factory. In 1881, South Pacific Coast railroad employee, Joseph H. Aram, married Evangaline, Dunstone’s daughter. SPCRR issued the following congratulatory statement: “SPCRR tender you and your bride our sincerest congratulations on your marriage, with the hope that your future happiness will burn as bright as the fuse, and never die out till it burns to the end.”

In 1883, Talbot, Dunstone’s widow Susan, and Aram formed a partnership under the name W. H. Talbot & Co. “for the purpose of manufacturing patent fuse and farming.” On a fateful day in August just one year later, Aram was working at the plant, when there was an explosion in the room above him. He was watching the machinery that fed powder from hoppers in the room above into the fuse, to ensure that it was working correctly. Aram saw the roof raise up, and the sides of the room he was in spread out. Hurriedly he ran to a window intending to jump out, but as he reached the window a second explosion occurred throwing him out. He suffered a fractured arm and was badly bruised. The building was soon engulfed in flames and burned to the ground. It was uninsured and never rebuilt.

Aram, pictured here some years later at his home in Felton, lived very close to the Fuse Factory site. He was the railroad station agent for Felton, and later Boulder Creek.

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