Brothers by the name of Chapman built a mill pond dam on the Little Miami River about 1825 to power a mill manufacturing scythes. About 1846 Benjamin Carlton and the Austin brothers of the Austin Powder Company formed the Austin & Carlton Powder Company to convert the mill to the manufacture of gunpowder. Joseph W. King purchased the Austin & Carleton powder mill in 1855 and expanded it as the Miami Powder Company including a steam power plant and employee residences for the company town of Goes Station.[2] In 1872 Miami Powder Company formed the United States Gunpowder Trade Association, popularly known as the powder trust, with American Powder Mills, Austin Powder Company, DuPont, Hazard Powder Company, Laflin & Rand Powder Company, and Oriental Powder Company.[3] In 1877 Joseph King built the King's Great Western Powder Company at Kings Mills, Ohio which later became the Peters Cartridge Company.[2]
A boiler explosion on 1 March 1886 ignited 2500 25-pound (11 kg) kegs of powder in a storehouse which disintegrated killing three men, leaving a crater 10 feet (3.0 m) deep and causing an "earthquake" felt in Columbus and Cincinnati.[1] Two men were killed in a 1920 explosion, and the company closed after a 1925 explosion destroyed several buildings.[2]