For a few years, the Antioch vicinity was one of the nation’s most important potash-producing regions, and Antioch grew from a small village to a town of about 2,000. When the First World War broke out, the United States was cut off from European sources of potash, a component of fertilizer used in the cotton belt. Two University of Nebraska graduates in chemistry developed a method for separating potash from the alkaline lakes of the Nebraska Sand Hills, and large-scale production began in 1916. Brine containing potash was pumped from the lakes to reduction plants near the railroads, and by the spring of 1918 five plants were operating in the vicinity. Nebraska potash was used to make fertilizer, epsom salts, soda, and other products. After the war ended, foreign potash imports resumed, and because French and German potash could be produced more cheaply than the Nebraska product, the boom collapsed. The last Antioch plant closed in 1921, and the ruins of reduction plants and pumping stations remain from the activity that once made Antioch a major potash production center.