Lawrence hasn’t always been known first and foremost as a university town. In the late 1800s it had an entirely different moniker: “Barbed Wire Capital of the West.”

In 1883, the city was home to four barbed wire factories that later merged to form a giant known as the Consolidated Barb Wire Factory.

By 1898, the company had grown to 375 employees, making it the city’s largest employer and the biggest private employer in the state.

“For Kansas, it was the Boeing of its day,” said Stephen Hill, the great-grandson of the entrepreneur who was a driving force behind the company.

The entrepreneur was Justin DeWitt Bowersock, and the barbed wire factory was just one piece of an industrial empire he created along the banks of the Kaw River.

Hill and his family still run the hydroelectric power plant just north of Sixth and Massachusetts streets that Bowersock developed into the source of inexpensive energy that fueled his vast industrial holdings.

Hill said the plant was a key to Bowersock’s success because he was able to fend off competitors since he had the use of cheap power. In fact, the mill fed not only businesses along the banks of the river but also used a system of overhead belts and pulleys that stretched onto Massachusetts and New Hampshire streets to fuel businesses prior to the widespread use of electricity.

In addition to barbed wire, Bowersock was involved in an iron works manufacturer, ice company, a chemical company, several milling companies and the Lawrence Paper Co., which is still operated by members of the Bowersock family.

Several of the businesses made Lawrence a star on the industrial map, Hill said. The Lawrence Paper Co. was the first paper mill west of the Mississippi River when it was started in 1882 and was the first company to create a corrugated cardboard that would replace wooden crates used to package food.

Another company with Bowersock influences, the Jenny Wren Flour Co., also produced a first of its kind product, Jenny Wren Ready-Mixed Flour, which is similar to the Bisquick flour found on grocery shelves today.

“I would say the town has been home to several very significant developments and discoveries that people may not know about now,” Hill said.

That’s in part because the business environment in Lawrence has changed over the years.

“In the early days, the Lawrence business community was about building and making things,” said Arly Allen, former president and chief executive of another longtime Lawrence business, Allen Press. “That was the core of the city. The university back then was really a minor factor in the economy. But since the 1960s the university has grown exponentially and it has never been the same.”

From left, Sarah, Eric and Henry Nelson and Marcia and Stephen Hill are the fourth-, fifth- and sixth-generation owners of the Bowersock Mills & Power Co. They are pictured in the Bowersock power plant.

Specifically, the economy has become much more service oriented than industrial in nature, Allen said. The changes have been positive and negative.

He said the university had created new opportunities, noting it was “vital” to his company’s transformation from a traditional print shop to a publisher of scientific and scholarly journals. But Allen said he still missed the days when the city was full of true Lawrence-based businesses.

“The fact that people are commuting outside of the community for other jobs or working for companies in Lawrence that are owned elsewhere I think means that we lose some sense of community,” he said.

But Hill said the changes had been beneficial to the economy.

“We have a lot more diversification than we used to, and that is very beneficial to the community,” he said.

Lawrence learned a hard lesson about how quickly a local business could be swallowed up by a larger company when the Consolidated Barb Wire Factory closed its doors in 1899.

A year earlier it had been forced to sell when an East Coast company, American Steel and Wire, cornered the market on the raw materials needed to make barbed wire. American Steel and Wire closed the Lawrence plant as soon as it used up the plant’s supply of steel rods. And American Steel and Wire went on to make a bigger name for itself. It became known as U.S. Steel, the industrial giant of Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan.

Industrial businesses aren’t the only companies that have seen change at the hands of a national competitor. Lawrence retailers were introduced to a competitor every bit as large as U.S. Steel in its heyday — Wal-Mart.

Rod Ernst remembers the days when there were six hardware stores in downtown Lawrence between Sixth and 12th streets.

Now, Ernst & Son Hardware, which opened its doors in 1905, is the only hardware store in the six-block stretch.

“Forty years ago, if you wanted to shop in Lawrence, you pretty much had to come downtown,” Ernst said.

But then the 1970s came along and large discount retailers began eyeing Lawrence’s undeveloped south Iowa Street. Gibson’s, a regional discounter that was in the shopping center now housing the Food 4 Less grocery store, was the first to come to town.

Ernst said downtown retailers survived that addition relatively unscathed. Downtown’s retail scene remained largely unchanged when Kmart soon followed. But in 1983, Wal-Mart came to Lawrence.

“When Wal-Mart moved in, that made a big difference,” Ernst said. “When three of them were out there, you definitely noticed.”

Through the years, the downtown area has lost many types of businesses, some because of discounters like Wal-Mart and some because of larger changes in society. Downtown once boasted car dealerships, a seed house and several grocery stores.

City officials and other leaders have expressed concern about the number of entertainment establishments downtown. But others say those type of establishments have always been prominent.

Ernst said in the 1950s “half the block” along Massachusetts Street between Seventh and Eighth streets was filled with pool halls.

“I don’t think we have a bad mix when it comes to entertainment these days,” he said. “But it is kind of odd because some days it is harder to find a parking space at night than it is during the days.”

Marty Kennedy, an owner of his family’s Kennedy Glass Co., has spent most of his 57 years in and around the downtown area. He said that even though some of the businesses had changed, downtown still had a lot of its same feel from yesteryear.

“I remember my folks used to walk us kids to the Velvet Freeze once a week for an ice-cream cone,” Kennedy said. “That was our big treat. The Velvet Freeze is gone, but families can still walk downtown for an ice-cream cone.

“The town has evolved a lot over the years, but it is still really a lot the same.”