The editors of the website "MotorBiscuit" put it simply: “If you’re of a certain age, you remember the days when station wagons filled the roads.”
During the civil war, the manufacture of powder and explosives was often handled by the most vulnerable, young women and children, whose labor was needed when so many men had been sent off to war. On March 13, 1863, the confederacy experienced a munitions disaster, in the confederate capitol of Richmond.