After the Civil War, manufacturers and businesses in Newport and Oliver Township continued to grow. The Marshall Iron Furnace and Bechtel Tannery were founded in 1871, and by the late 1800s the area had expanded considerably to include planing and saw mills, lumber and stock yards, service businesses, two freight and passenger train stations, a foundry, brick yard, wagon builder, bottling plant, ice plant, glue factory, and monument stone works. With the advent of a municipal water system in the 1890s, and later electricity, three textile mills, a milk plant, and a tool factory opened. The American Oak Extract Company employed as many as 75 workers. This growth created a frantic demand for residential, religious, and commercial structures, leaving an architectural heritage that exists to this day. Changing technologies and consolidation of industry, however, led to a near collapse of the manufacturing economy prior to and during the Depression of the 1930s. In 1921 several hundred jobs began disappearing with the closure of the Newport and Sherman's Valley Railroad and the Marshall Iron Furnace. The Oak Extract plant closed in 1925, the planing mill went into foreclosure in 1929, and in 1931 the six-decade-old Bechtel Tannery ceased production. Founded in 1922, the Vacuum Tool Company, later known as Snap-On Tools, survived in Newport until 1955. The textile mills, employing dozens of women, gradually folded, and by the mid-20th century the industrial and manufacturing base of the river community virtually ceased to be. Newport's economic golden age was likely the last quarter of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th century.