Gun Manufacturers of the Mohawk Valley
H.M Quackenbush Co.
Henry M. Quackenbush was an apprentice at Remington Arms at age 14. After a few years at Remington Arms, He opened his own gun manufacturing business in Herkimer, NY. Known mostly for spring loaded air rifles, they also produced other things like nutcrackers. Henry Quackenbush is less known for his invention, the extension ladder.
H. M. Quackenbush Co. was acquired by another company and shutdown the Herkimer building in 2005. The building is reportedly the site of “The Herkimer Nine”, a pipe dream of some Herkimer natives trying to prove basketball started in Herkimer instead of Springfield, Mass.
Savage Arms
Savage Repeating Arms Company was formed in 1894 in Utica, NY by Arthur William Savage. Many mergers and acquisitions later, they had a very successful business nestled in the heart of the Mohawk Valley. By the time of WW II, they were a producer of the Thompson Sub-Machine Gun (Tommy Gun), .30 caliber and .50 caliber Browning Automatic Machine Guns, and were the largest producer of British Lee Enfileld Rifles.
Operations left Utica after WW II and moved to Massachusetts. The Savage Stevens company still exists today.
The facility in Utica, NY was huge. After Savage left the Utica location, it was used by Remington Rand Corporation built UNIVAC computers there. The UNIVAC operations closed down in the mid 1960s. The building got a third breath of wind when a developer turned it into CharlesTown Shopping Mall, a collection of outlet shops in the 1980s until about 1990.
Sadly, the vacant building burned in 2020 and nothing usable remains.
Image from Syracuse.com
Remington Arms Co.
The 800 pound gorilla of the Mohawk Valley Gun Manufactures located in Ilion, NY.
Remington Arms in it’s heyday was a manufacturer of some of the finest guns.
They have been split up, acquired, split up, acquired, and split up again many times, yet they still remain in some form or another. The current incarnation of Remington Arms is on life support trying to get something off the ground after their latest bankruptcy filing. It remains to be seen if they will emerge with their former glory of some of the better guns on the planet or whether they will crank out $200 guns for the masses.
The Ilion factory consumes a huge amount of space. Probably the equivalent of four city blocks.
On the back of the property live “The Stables”, home to the Ilion Little Theatre Club. The stables were part of the original Remington mansion which was torn down in the 1930s.
