Jaite - More Than a Company Town
...the biggest thing I remember...was the houses. All in a row and all the same color. And I remember that was strange to me...I understood it was good business to provide places for your employees because after all it was rural.
Hazel Broughton (Married into Jaite Community, mid 20th century)
The National Park Service Headquarters before you was once a thriving community built by the Jaite Paper Company. The duplexes on Riverview Road were built in 1906 to house workers. The single family bungalows on Vaughn Road were added 11 years later.
Unlike other company towns, Jaite had no company script as money and had no enforced codes of conduct or curfews for workers. Picture a community, complete with children playing, adults tilling small gardens, and orchards growing behind the homes. Jaite had its own post office, train stop, and general store.
Most residents were Polish immigrants recruited from Cleveland neighborhoods or through relatives who also worked at the mill. In the 1950s the era of the company town ended as first the mill and then the housing were sold. The National Park Service converted the buildings to their current use in 1986.
Marker is at the intersection of Vaughn Road and Riverview Road, on the right when traveling west on Vaughn Road.
Courtesy hmdb.org
