Washington, Missouri has the distinction of being named the “Corncob Pipe Capital of the World.”\u00a0 The company whose work led to this distinction is the Missouri Meerschaum Company, one of the world’s largest producers of corncob pipes.\u00a0 This town sits in the low hills along the Missouri River.\u00a0 Two famous Americans who have favored corncob pipes include Mark Twain and Herbert Hoover.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Located west of St. Louis, Washington provides the world’s supply of sweet smelling corncob pipes from its two factories that are designed exactly for this purpose.\u00a0 The first factory had its beginnings as a small business in the late 1860s.\u00a0 By 1872, its owner, Henry Tibbe, gave his business an official name, the Missouri Meerschaum Company.\u00a0 By 1939, another factory, Buescher Industry, had been founded to aid in the production of corncob pipes.<\/p>\n
Both factories allow visitors.\u00a0 At Buescher Industry, visitors can peruse the collection of approximately eight thousand corncob pipes on display there.\u00a0 This is quite possibly the largest known collection of corncob pipes.
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\nMissouri Meerschaum Company only allows visitors through special arrangements or appointments.\u00a0 The atmosphere here remains authentic to the original days of the factory.\u00a0 Old corncob pipe ads are proudly displayed.\u00a0 Filing cabinets are constructed from wood sit upon the original wooden floors.\u00a0 Original documents including awards and photographs are framed and adorn the vintage walls.<\/p>\n
Also an interesting sightseer spot in Washington is an interesting array of buildings from the Civil War era that line part of one of its main streets, Front Street.\u00a0 These buildings include an abandoned factory that once produced corncob pipes.\u00a0 Washington was a major stop for many of the showboats that took to the river.<\/p>\n
Corncob pipes require a special hybrid corn that contains a high wood content for their production.\u00a0 This hybrid produces unusually large cobs that are excellent for the crafting of the pipes.\u00a0 In fact, the cobs are so large that a total of four pipes can be made from one cob.\u00a0 The cobs must first be aged for at least two years before they can be used to make the pipes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Once the cobs are aged properly, they are cut into pieces, hollowed out, and sanded.\u00a0 Next, they are coated with plaster of paris and allowed to dry.\u00a0 Then, they are sanded again and shellacked.\u00a0 Once a stem hole is bored into the piece, the stem and plastic mouthpiece are firmly attached.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington, Missouri has the distinction of being named the “Corncob Pipe Capital of the World.”\u00a0 The company whose work led to this distinction is the Missouri Meerschaum Company, one of the world’s largest producers of corncob pipes.\u00a0 This town sits in the low hills along the Missouri River.\u00a0 Two famous Americans who have favored corncob […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.avivadirectory.com\/trivia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.avivadirectory.com\/trivia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.avivadirectory.com\/trivia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.avivadirectory.com\/trivia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.avivadirectory.com\/trivia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.avivadirectory.com\/trivia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":321,"href":"https:\/\/www.avivadirectory.com\/trivia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions\/321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.avivadirectory.com\/trivia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.avivadirectory.com\/trivia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.avivadirectory.com\/trivia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}