After the U.S. Congress declared war on April 6, 1917, agents of the U.S. government discussed the need for new gunpowder plants with E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, a chemical company more commonly known as the DuPont Company. The DuPont Engineering Company was contracted to survey and do preliminary design for an explosives plant on the Kanawha River sixteen miles west of Charleston, West Virginia. This was to be one of three new government plants and was called Explosives Plant "C." This small collection consists of three panoramic photographs of the U.S. Government Explosives Plant "C" in Nitro, West Virginia, taken after the end of World War I.