For a city that’s never reached a population of even 35,000 people, Manitowoc sure has developed a world-wide reputation.
If you missed my post on Tuesday about the Manitowoc Christmas connection, you can read that here. This week, on our way to Missouri, we checked into a hotel. Randy went to fill the ice bucket and came back saying, “you should write about Manitowoc ice machines.” Head slapper. I’d forgotten there are Manitowoc ice machines in hotels all over the world. We’ve seen them and I’m willing to bet you have too. What I didn’t know as Paul Harvey used to say, is the rest of the story.
The Manitowoc Company started in 1902 as Manitowoc Shipbuilding (which also included Burger Boats, still in business in Manitowoc today, but not part of the Manitowoc Company). Looking to diversify, they started building cranes in the 1920s. There are the Manitowoc cranes on construction sites all over the world. During World War II the Department of the Navy contracted with Manitowoc Shipbuilding to build 28 submarines.
After WWII, they got into the commercial refrigeration business and are a leading supplier of commercial ice making machines world-wide. The Manitowoc brand is diverse, both from a manufacturing and a geographic viewpoint.
One last interesting tidbit about Manitowoc. On September 5, 1962 a 20-lb piece of a Soviet Sputnik fell from space and crashed onto North 8th Street. That prompted Manitowoc to hold Sputnikfest every year, named one of the top 5 funkiest (wacky and tacky, they say) festivals in the country.
There’s a lot to see and do in Manitowoc if you ever visit. A lot more than I realized when I was growing up there.
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