Sparta Industries

Sparta Industries is a pipe factory operating in the town of Sparta, in the foothills of the Appalachians in North Carolina. The bulk of American factory pipe production has come out of this facility for more than eighty years; although the company has changed hands several times, production has always stayed in the same town. It is best known today for the Dr. Grabow brand.

An Industry Moves to Town

Sparta's introduction to pipes is tied to the supply shortages of the Second World War. When shipments of briar from the Mediterranean basin were cut off, American manufacturers set out to find usable wood domestically, and the search led to Alleghany County, whose slopes were covered with mountain laurel. The Lavietes family opened the finishing workshop of the business it founded under the name D&P Pipe Works just outside town in the spring of 1944. According to the local press of the time, the facility, with sixty-five employees, was turning out more than ten thousand pipes a week, and the workforce was expected to double before long.

The Spartan pipes made from the local wood were plain, thick-bodied pieces, finished with maple mouthpieces and military mount fittings. Most of these pipes went not to the civilian market but into the field rations of troops in Europe. It is also said that the laurel root was boiled in a boric acid solution to make it more heat-resistant; this detail appears only in records compiled by the pipe community. The material itself, meanwhile, was troublesome: roots pulled from the rocky slope cracked easily. Once briar began arriving again, the factory returned to its usual material; the local-wood experiment lasted only a few years and remains one of the known examples of the alternative woods resorted to during the war years.