E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company was established in 1802 by Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817) and his son Eleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771-1834). The du Pont’s purchased a mill site on the banks of the Brandywine River just North of Wilmington, Delaware. During wartime the company was a major supplier for the United States government. During peacetime, the company marketed their product towards sportsmen and hunters. Throughout the 1900s and 1910s, the company shifted its focus away from gunpowder production and towards chemistry innovations.

The DuPont Company purchased a site near City Point, Virginia on the James River in 1912 in order to build a dynamite plant located closer to the southern market. The onset of World War I, however, created a great demand for guncotton, and the Hopewell Works was converted to that purpose, starting in 1915. It became the largest guncotton plant in the world, employing at its heighth some 28,000 people. After the war, the plant was sold off for other uses, including the making of ceramics by the Hopewell China Corporation.

John A. Dick (1879-1972), the first full-time photographer hired by the DuPont Company, documented the growth of the plant during World War I in these photographs.