The kind of economic hemorrhaging Williamsport went through in the Great Depression doesn’t go away. Scars mark the city, even 80 years later.

Williamsport’s community had done well industrially during World War I with the manufacturing of various motors, shoes, mine nets and cables despite severe rationing of other materials.

The 1920s were highly profitable for townsfolk, ranking second to the lumber boom, according to Williamsport: Frontier Village to Regional Center.

The returning military men, roughly 3,100, slipped nicely into the middle class. Williamsport citizens were eager to pick up new technologies, purchasing around 4,000 vehicles from around a dozen dealers.

Returning soldiers started families and economic opportunities attracted others. Williamsport’s population rose 20 percent from 1920 to 1929. Around 44,500 people called Williamsport home by the end of the 20s.

And in 1929, 54 percent of people living in and around Williamsport were working jobs directly benefitting regional manufacturing.

In the midst of all this success, an early omen of what was ahead surfaced. U.S. Rubber Company, which built what is now known as the Pajama Factory, at 1307 Park Ave., was producing 4,500 pairs of shoes per day and bringing in around $1.5 million a year. The company closed its Williamsport plant in 1928, sending 1,162 people home without a job.

Residents soon were lulled back into security with headlines in the winter of 1929 and 1930 in the Gazette and Bulletin ensuring the stock market had stabilized.

In the coming years, Williamsport’s industry started to quake.

Lycoming Manufacturing Company, which had produced 57 different types of engines in 1920, reduced its employment from 2,208 to 1,276, by 1933.

C.A. Reed Paper Products reduced its payroll from 771 to 541, and never quite recovered, only employing 475 people in 1967, according to Hands on Heritage. The company exchanged hands several times and today, the factory, at 1000 Commerce Drive, is rented out as office space.

Williamsport Wire Rope Company, which recently had finished construction of a new factory, at 100 Maynard Street, was hardly able to fill the structure with workers, nearly chopping their payroll in half from 443 to 201 in 1931.

Frank E. Plankenhorn, a prominent businessman of the time, created Grampian Hills Development Company and envisioned Grampian estates to rival houses on Valamont when he brought in Italian stonemasons, was forced to sell in the 30s, according to a 2015 survey of Williamsport historic structures by Lycoming College.

Around 2,500 relief gardens were started, a larger one was located where Lycoming College Athletic field is today.

Business men in the area created the Central Emergency Relief Committee to give out food, clothing and provide temporary wages to around 20 percent of the city.

Nearly every aspect of life adapted to the times, including publishers.

The Bush and Bull Company printed “Grandma’s Cook Book” in 1933, which promised to “Meet present day conditions,” and “Live better at less expense.”

Found inside were recipes for cooking calf brain – boiled, fried or on toast – cow tongue, sheep’s head, frog’s legs and three pages of potato recipes, among other depression delicacies, as well as how to tell if meat, fish or poultry has turned.

Under a section titled “Timely Suggestions” there were a list of helpful tips: “Milk which is slightly turned or changed may be sweetened and rendered fit for use again by stirring in a little soda, save bread crumbs for frying later, and store lemons underwater to keep them fresh.”

Those that lasted through the collapse were given relief in three ways0, leading to eventual recovery.

Charles Krouse was hired by the Williamsport Chamber of Commerce in 1931 to look for firms willing to move to Williamsport from New York City. Seventeen business moved, attracted by the low tax rates and incentives on offer, but this took time because many other cities were offering the same, according to the History of Lycoming County by John Meginness.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal started the Works Progress Administration, which gave about $5 million in work relief in Lycoming County. Ninety percent of that money went to wages, allowing business to employ 3,637 people.

And, as World War II came to the forefront, the US economy as a whole was kick started by the massive war effort.

Much like the war before, Williamsport’s industries went into action once more.

Williamsport did not finish out the 30s unscaved, however, with nearly a decade of depression capped off by the flood of 1936. Between 1930 and 1940, only 200 people left Lycoming County, while 1,400 people had left Williamsport in the same amount of time.