Between 1920 and 1927, Helena-West Helena was the second largest hardwood manufacturing center in the United States, supported by abundant local timber, available labor, and favorable shipping rates. Chicago Mill and Pekin Cooperage were the two largest operations in West Helena, and the city also had a Southern Hardwood Traffic Association office and a National Hardwood Lumber Association chief inspector with two deputies. Chicago Mill and Lumber Company, one of the city's most prominent industries, moved into Helena in 1908 and expanded into West Helena in 1914 by buying 125 acres. In 1915, it employed 600 men and operated a hardwood mill that could process 90,000 feet of logs per day, a box factory with a capacity of 70,000 feet per day, and a veneer mill that made boxes and box shooks. Unforeseen events later brought decline to the hardwood industry locally and nationwide as trucks and automobiles put wagon makers out of business, metal buckets replaced wooden ones, Prohibition from 1920 to 1933 greatly reduced the market for barrels and led five companies in West Helena to close, other businesses failed during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the floods of 1927 and 1937 destroyed infrastructure and forced several mills in Helena to close, and after World War II the forest products industry in the Delta declined. Even so, lumber remained West Helena's most important industry into the late twentieth century, and remnants of the once vast facilities are still evident.