Before interstate highways, before gas stations were common, when large swaths of the middle US were little more than tumbleweeds, the thought of trying to take your family across the US by automobile was downright insane. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be done.
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.