Welland, named after the Welland River in England, is located in the center of Niagara. Within a half-hour, residents can travel to Niagara Falls, Niagara-on-the-Lake, St. Catharines, Port Colborne or Buffalo. It has been traditionally known as the place where rails and water meet, referring to the railways from Buffalo to Toronto and Southwestern Ontario, and the waterways of the Welland Canal and Welland River, which played a great role in the city's development. The city was first settled in 1788 by United Empire Loyalists. Welland, because of its proximity to the Sir Adam Beck hydroelectric station at Niagara Falls, was historically known for its steel, automotive, and textile industries. Manufacturing firms were the biggest employers in Welland, with companies like Union Carbide, United Steel, Plymouth Cordage Company, three drop forges, a cotton mill, and the Atlas Steel Company, as well as general manufacturing plants, influencing the shaping of early Welland.The Plymouth Cordage Company was the first major industrial company to open a plant in Welland in 1906. It was a rope making company with headquarters in Plymouth, Massachusetts; it became the largest manufacturer of rope and twine in the world. Plymouth binder twine was popular among farmers to package farm crops such as grass, wheat and straw, and was the inspiration for the naming of the Plymouth brand of automobiles first produced in 1928. Many workers who relocated to Welland from the company's operations in Plymouth were of Italian origin. To minimise the potential effects of cultural and language barriers, Plymouth Cordage sent four foremen to Welland: one was Italian, one was French, one was German and one was English. The city is separated by the Welland River and Welland Canal which links Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. The Welland Canal is a ship canal and has been involved in the history of the area ever since the First Welland Canal was extended to reach Lake Erie in 1833. Traversing the Niagara Peninsula from Port Weller to Port Colborne, the canal forms a key section of the St. Lawrence Seaway, enabling ships to ascend and descend the Niagara Escarpment and bypass Niagara Falls. About 40,000,000 tonnes of cargo are carried through the Welland Canal annually by traffic of about 3,000 ocean and Great Lakes vessels. The original canal and its successors allowed goods from Great Lakes ports such as Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago, as well as heavily industrialized areas of the United States and Ontario, to be shipped to the port of Montreal or to Quebec City, where they were reloaded onto ocean-going vessels for international shipping.Prior to the Welland By-Pass project, the Welland Canal cut through the centre of Welland. As a result, a very prominent split was created between the east side and the west side of the city. The west side grew primarily to the north and became the most affluent, while the east side expanded south. The Welland By-Pass project, started in 1967 and finished in 1973, provided a new, shorter alignment for the Welland Canal by removing it from downtown Welland to the outskirts of the city. With the completion of the bypass, the east end of Welland became a man-made island, lying between the new and old canal channels. The old alignment of the canal was renamed the Welland Recreational Waterway with the purpose of developing several recreational facilities and tourist attractions along its shores.In 1914, a local business called Empire Cotton Mills was bought by a Quebec-based company. They brought in twenty francophone families to work in the mill, giving a start to a French-speaking community still very alive in the city today. The Atlas Steel Co. was founded in the 1920s. Roy H. Davis and partners bought the Welland plant from its American shareholders in 1928. Gun barrels were produced here during the Second World War.