| Butler Pennsylvania 12
Home of the Jeep No one boasts about great things our town has brought about like the little car designed here in wartime. We tend to eschew the lamplight or are too busy getting on with chores to brag about duties performed or those on drawing boards. Who, until now, has thought of basking in the glory of that one achievement? One would think a museum fitting or annual meetings for lovers of our car the world over. No, we allow our molds, be they cars or people, to leave our unwalled city with what they have received— their unique fashioning— to unfold where they will and how. Such is our endowment, painful though it be, to our nation, to the world. In our town square facing the Court House a great stone monument names those for whom we weep. Near it stands a narrow marble slab that reads, modestly: Butler—Home of the Jeep. Next Home |
| The first Jeep was designed at the American Bantam Car Company in Butler by Karl Probst. All in all, the company manufactured 2,675 of its version of the car. But the demand was so great and the Butler plant so small that the War Department authorized other larger companies in Detroit to produce their nearly identical version of the Jeep to fill the urgent military need. the Butler company went out of business in 1956. |
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