Button making was once a major local industry in the Leavenworth area, where 14 local species of mussels were used for buttons, though most are now gone and some are extinct. The 1910 Census of 166 families in Leavenworth showed 32 men working as button-cutters, 4 as sorters, and 1 as the engine man, while others were braillers who fished for mussels. Men cut buttons from mussel shells, and for a short time women sewed the buttons onto cards in sets for distribution to stores. When not finished locally, rough-cut buttons were shipped to Massachusetts, where the owner’s other factories could polish the blanks and drill holes. A secondary industry developed from mussel shell button blanks that had piled up in front of the factory, grinding them for chickens to provide calcium and using them for street gravel.