Welcome to Dunkirk, Indiana, a little town of over 2000 people just outside of Muncie.

Now, the residents here are proud of one little thing.

Now, the residents here are proud of one little thing.

Well, make that one big thing.

Well, make that one big thing.

And it's kind of hard to miss.

now, if we want to learn why Dunkirk calls itself the Glass Capital of Indiana, then we need to head down the road and see a man named Bob.

Meet Bob Rawlings.

He's the curator here at the Glass Museum.

And to be perfectly clear, his job keeps him pretty busy.

We've got about 20,000 pieces of glass here on display now, and I think we've probably got maybe 9,000 of them or that have been, identified.

He's identified glass bottles, He's identified glass bottles, glass bells, glass bowls, glass plates, Glass goblets.

Glass fish.

Glass owls.

Glass hens.

Venetian glass and even a glass bottle with Dwight D. Eisenhower's face on it ... for some reason.

In fact, every single tag that you see in here, that's Bob's handiwork.

There wasn't a single identifying label in here when he started seven years ago.

And, that's is pretty much my full time job.

I put the label on everything that we have that, that I have researched for, and I try and put the name of the object, the year that was made and the company that made it.

And the pattern number, Luckily for us, Bob is very qualified for this position.

my background was 30 years in the glass industry.

Back in the 60s, a 21 year old Bob Rawlings started working in quality assurance for the Indiana Glass Company, one of the two big glass makers here in town.

And after a few decades of climbing the corporate ladder.

They made me vice president of manufacturing.

I ran Oklahoma plant.

I ran the Dunkirk plant.

Put 210,000 miles on T.W.A.

one year.

So not only does he know his stuff, he also knows what makes Dunkirk so special.

It was the volume that came out of this town is the reason they decided it was the glass capital of Indiana.

There was no other town that even came close to producing what we produced here.

The Dunkirk area was first settled back in 1837, became a town in 1853 and then saw some moderate growth for a while.

But then everything took off with the discovery of natural gas just 30 years later.

Soon there was a 75ft tall well right off of Main Street, and a lot of new companies came to town looking for cheap fuel to make their products.

And with the rail line ready to go with raw materials, Dunkirk attracted one very particular type of business.

Well, one time Dunkirk had 12 glass factories.

a lot of them made window glass.

A lot of them made canning jars.

A lot of them made homeware for plates, cups and saucers type of thing.

More business meant more money, and more money meant more workers.

And Dunkirk's population exploded from just a few hundred to around four or five thousand within the decade.

With all that growth and prosperity, what could go wrong?

They thought that it was an endless supply of gas, it'd never run out.

And, well, the pressure actually did run out.

And, got to a point where you couldn't fire anything on it anymore.

And so the smaller companies left One by one, many of those new companies packed up and left town.

Soon there were only two left.

Indiana Glass.

And at that time, Hart Glass managed to survive.

After the early 1900s, things started to settle down for the town.

The two glass companies continued to grow, becoming large enough to start producing millions of products for people all over the world.

And Dunkirk, well, they grew along with it.

One of the families that settled here were the Stewart's.

Well, my, my great grandfather and his brother came to Dunkirk Well, my, my great grandfather and his brother came to Dunkirk on the train, and, started Stewart Brothers furniture.

on the train, and, started Stewart Brothers furniture.

Connie Retter is a fourth generation resident and president of the Dunkirk Historical Society.

Growing up in this glass town means a lot to her.

Oh, gee, it was great growing up in Dunkirk.

I mean, we had everything and anything you wanted here.

we had a couple of grocery stores.

We had couple of dime stores.

We had men's and women's clothing stores, lots of gas stations, you know, just anything that you wanted in a town.

We had it When Bob's family packed up and moved to town, they noticed the same thing.

Well, when we came here in 1956, it was quite a booming little town.

And, Dunkirk, you couldn't find a place to live.

Every place was, filled up.

In fact, when we moved here, we didn't have a house to live in.

We lived in the back of my dad's drugstore for about three months until, a house became available.

I could never remember who worked at which factory.

You know whose dad worked at this factory?

Whose dad worked at that factory?

And they worked shift work a lot of times.

So, you go to a friend's house and you might have to be quiet because dad's asleep, because he's worked nights.

They were good people.

They were really good people.

And you found that when you're working with these people, they're all very sincere, and You didn't find anybody out there that didn't want to do a good job.

They're proud of what they did.

And, we were proud as of a company that, was able to, produce tons and tons of glassware every year.

Plenty of those tons made their way around the country.

Some may have even made their way right into your hands.

Have you ever ordered a root beer at your local A&W?

There's Dunkirk history in that glass, and it all started with a salesman at a competing company that came to town looking for a job.

And when he came to work for Indiana Glass, the A&W account came with him.

That's how we got the A&W account.

With their new customer, Indiana Glass went to work.

We made millions of them, I can tell you that, they had about six different sizes, and, it was nothing to make 150, 200,000 at a time.

So we made a lot of beer mugs.

Sadly though, like everything else that has a beginning, Indiana Glass had to come to an end.

The plant closed up shop in the early 2000s.

I guess people didn't use tableware anymore.

They used plastic and paper, whatever.

And, they just didn't use, glassware anymore, and, the demand wasn't there.

it was, quite a blow to the community.

You know, a lot of people were out of a job, I mean, when you lay off, in a neighborhood of a thousand employees, you've got a real problem with, people trying to find jobs.

And while yes, there were cracks, the Indiana Glass closure didn't shatter the town.

To this day, there's still more than one reason to see Dunkirk's glass as half full.

One of them is that second company I mentioned earlier.

You know, the other one that survived the natural gas boom and bust.

They are still here.

And the Dunkirk plant here is the oldest bottle house in the United States, and probably one of the most modern in the United States.

Now known as Ardagh Glass Incorporated, their 400 plus employees can crank out 4.5 million glass containers a day.

that's what founded this town.

And, you're very happy you still have a factory.

that's what we call ourselves.

It's the glass capital of Indiana, because we did have so many glass factories here and made lots of different kinds of glass.

After 139 years and counting, there's a strong argument for that nickname.

trick now is making sure all that history is polished and ready to go for the next generation.

Luckily, Dunkirk has Connie and Bob for that.

Well, if you're a history buff, this is the place to come if you're interested in glass.

If we can't find the answer for you, we'll look it up and get it to you.

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