The Ranger Torpedo Company Snippet

The Ranger Torpedo Company

"There was a company named The Ranger Torpedo Company owned by Mr. Jack Rapp, Sr. The company manufactured nitroglycerin at what is now a ghost town between Ranger and Breckenridge. The name of the place was Leeray. There’s nothing much left to see at Leeray, not much I could find anyway. The last time the Ranger Torpedo Company plant ran was in 1946, I think.

The story I remember was after the war. Mr.Rapp bought new trucks and pickups and as always the equipment was parked for the weekend. No one was at the plant and for some reason the dump ground exploded. Old cans with a bit of nitro, wax paper, sawdust and just trash from years of operation set it off. The blast was so great that it sandblasted the windshields and paint off the trucks several hundred yards away.

After that, the plant was closed. New and safer things were being invented. Mr. Rapp went to Mexico in the early 1950s and built a plant for the Mexican government. The happy ending is after building explosives all the way from Oil City, Pennsylvania to Ranger to Mexico, Jack Rapp died from old age.

About Leeray. It's been too long. Anything that could be recognized as part of the plant has long since been stolen. If you travel south from there toward Cisco, about a mile before you reach the "Y" there is a patch of the old highway on the east side of the road. That is where the "dead man’s curve" was cut from the highway years ago. Also looking east and a little north from there you can see Gunsight."