By MICHELE SULLIVAN AND J.P. SANDEFUR

With a chest-pounding concussion, 57 years of Front Royal history went down in a cloud of red dust Tuesday morning.

The 360-foot-tall Avtex Fibers smokestack, made of brick baked hard enough to withstand acid- laden emissions that dissolved the very underpinnings of the defunct rayon-manufacturing plant, fell in a few heartbeats under an enormous load of dynamite. Three warning sirens from fire trucks below signaled its impending doom, just before 9:50 a.m.. The roar of exploding charges, however, was not the first sign of its destruction.

Instead, an immense cloud of dust and hurtling bricks shot out from the base of the tower in a flat, circular plane, like a ring around Saturn. Seconds later, the roar and thump of the explosion rolled across Avtex’s empty fields and the stack collapsed upon itself. The first step of the Environmental Protection Agency’s eight-month demolition of Avtex buildings was complete.

When the plant, originally known as American Viscose, came on line in 1940, it was the most technologically advanced rayon manufacturing business in the United States. American Viscose imported a staff of specialists from all over the country to get the plant up and running, and hired scores of local workers as well. During World War II, the plant made parachute material vital to the war effort. In more recent times, after being purchased by Avtex Fibers Inc., the plant was the sole source of caronized rayon necessary for Department of Defense and NASA projects, including the space shuttle.

But by the time Avtex took on responsibility for keeping the space shuttle program in business, federal environmental officials had already identified it as a pollution nightmare that continually spewed toxic wastes into the air and the Shenandoah River. The plant closed briefly in 1988 because of leaking PCB-filled transformers. It reopened after a $45 million federal bailout designed to ensure a steady supply of rayon to the Department of Defense.

The plant’s death knell came in November 1989, when the State Water Control Board revoked the plant’s wastewater discharge permit. John Gregg, chairman of Avtex Fibers, closed Avtex on Nov. 10, and it never opened for business again.

A flurry of activity occurred at the plant in the months immediately af ter the closing. In the ensuing years, silence, punctuated by the sound of metal falling away from the ruined buildings has reigned there. With no humans to keep it at bay, nature has tried to do its part to reclaim the site. Herons, ducks, and geese have made the old wastewater holding ponds their homes. Honeysuckle and Virginia creeper have nearly obscured the fence surrounding the grounds and covered signs proclaiming the hazards that still lie there, hidden in the crumbling buildings and buried beneath a new mantle of green.

"Danger," the sign proclaims. "U.S. EPA Superfund Project. No Trespassing: Hazardous Substance Present."

The stack, really an intricate exhaust system that ventilated the entire facility, bore its own load of pollutants. Although the EPA removed two dump truck-loads of chemical residue from the stack before destroying it, officials said a ½-inch-thick coating of acid salts, lead, PCbs, car-bon disulfide, and cadmium still clung the inside of the cylinder. EPA officials weren’t sure how much of the hazardous chemicals would be released into the air during the demolition.

They used water, at the rate of about 2,500 gallons per minute, to keep the dust from rising and spreading past the boundaries of the site.

As the smokestack fell, a cheer rose from the throngs of people lined up along Kendrick Lane, some of whom had secured their viewing sites several hours before. But not everyone in the crowd was happy to see the tower, once a symbol of Front Royal’s technlogical superiority, crumble in degradation.

Iva Oldt of Front Royal is one who was sad to see it go.

"This plant fed my kids for many years," she said, flanked by her daughter and grandson.

Oldt met her husband, also a plant worker, at Avtex in 1943. She said many of the plant’s employees during the days of World War II were women – most of the male workforce was fighting far away. Old worked for Avtex 43 years before retiring.

She said closing the plant hurt Front Royal’s economy, and the pocketbooks of the town’s residents.

Her friend Violet McInturff of Warren Co. agrees.

"I think it’s sad," she said, noting that the chimney was an important landmark to many area residents.

McInturff, who worked for Avtex for 20 years, said the people she worked with were just like family.

"We were proud of what we did," she said.

To this day, she believes politics closed the plant, not pollution.

"This plant took most of the blame for pollution in the area, but that wasn’t fair," she said.

She pointed out the department in which she once worked – one of a row of low brick buildings standing beneath the chimney, just behind the shipping docks visible from the road. She said she’s not sure she’ll come back to watch the other buildings being demolished, and began to cry.

"I don’t know if I can watch that," she said, and turned away to calm herself.