In what town was the third installation purchased by the man who controlled 51,193 acres?
In a December 8, 1953 speech to the United Nations, President Dwight D. Eisenhower announced a new Atoms for Peace policy, and Congress enacted his program into law the following year. Atoms for Peace "made funding accessible to anyone who had the imagination, if not the ability, to harness the atom's power for peaceful purposes". Under the new program, the airplane manufacturer Curtiss-Wright Corporation sought a large isolated area in central Pennsylvania "for the development of nuclear-powered jet engines and to conduct research in nucleonics, metallurgy, ultrasonics, electronics, chemicals and plastics". Curtiss-Wright worked closely with the state, and in June 1955, Governor George M. Leader signed legislation that authorized the construction of a research facility at Quehanna. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania sold Curtiss-Wright 8,597 acres (3,479 ha) for $181,250 ($22.50 an acre, $55.60 a hectare), and gave the company a 99-year lease on the remaining 42,596 acres (17,238 ha) at $30,000 a year. Curtiss-Wright controlled 51,193 acres (80.0 sq mi; 207.2 km2) in a regular 16-sided polygon, which was easier to fence than a circular area.The state constructed $1.6 million of roads to the area; the Quehanna Highway was built on parts of an old CCC road, which followed an earlier logging railroad grade. Pennsylvania also canceled 212 camp site leases to help ensure security for the installation. Curtiss-Wright built three facilities on its land. The first was a nuclear research center with a nuclear reactor and six shielded radiation containment chambers for handling radioactive isotopes, referred to as hot cells, at the end of Reactor Road. The second was for jet engine trials, and had two test cells with bunkers just north of Quehanna Highway, about 0.5 miles (0.8 km) apart. The northern test cell was at the center of the 16-sided polygon; even if a jet engine broke its moorings, it could not leave the polygonal area. Both of these were on the land which Curtiss-Wright had purchased, which was a regular octagon surrounded with a 24-mile (39 km) fence built by forest rangers, supervised from three guard houses on Quehanna Highway and Wykoff Run Road. The third installation was an industrial complex at the southeast edge of the polygon, in Karthaus Township, on the Quehanna Highway. At this site, a Curtiss-Wright division manufactured Curon foam for furniture and household products and used beryllium oxide to make high-temperature ceramics for application in the nuclear industry.
Karthaus Township