Brick from Jeep Overland plant
Location 12
Date: 1910
Owner: Patricia Taylor
This is a brick from a smoke stack at the Jeep Overland plant. Built in 1910, the smoke stacks were demolished in 2007. Nearly all of the Jeep Overland plant was torn down, except for a few crumbs. Per a June 2006 Kokomo Tribune article, "A Jeep plant that produced about 11 million vehicles over the past 96 years closes this week when the last painted Wrangler body rolls off the line. One-third of the Jeep Parkway factory, the nation's longest-operating auto plant, was torn down in 2002. The rest of the plant will eventually follow. "It's like losing an old friend," said Lucy Bonilla, a 53-year-old retiree who worked at the plant, now owned by DaimlerChrysler AG. Production of the 2007 Jeep Wrangler will begin next month at a new $900 million factory complex a few miles away. A spokesman said last week that the company does not yet have a timeline for demolition of the Parkway factory, including smokestacks that date to the 1920s and have been a Toledo landmark for generations. Two of the smokestacks spell out "Overland" in brick, harkening back to a previous owner, Willys-Overland Motor Co. Chrysler Corp. bought Jeep in 1987. Chrysler Group now is a unit of German-based DaimlerChrysler."