Distilling the Forest: Wood Alcohol and Industrial Chemistry in the Early Twentieth Century

In the early twentieth century, American chemists sought new ways to produce fuel and organic chemicals from the nation’s forests through improved wood distillation technologies. Remote hinterlands such as Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, which housed the world’s largest and longest-running wood distillery, became centers of technological innovation as new companies transformed the region’s abundant forests into complex chemical compounds that fueled global commodity chains. The story of wood alcohol, including methanol and cellulosic ethanol, produced at the Cliffs Dow Chemical Company in Marquette, Michigan, and in Germany reveals how a global network of extraction, technological exchange, and the politics of war catalyzed the organic chemical industry in the United States. This history illustrates the legacies that chemical innovations from the twentieth century have left on communities today.