Alliance Rubber gets Outstanding Landscape award
The Garland County Master Gardeners awarded the Outstanding Landscape award to Alliance Rubber Co., at 210 Carpenter Dam Road. The company was started in 1923 and is still owned by the Spencer family today. There are other companies that make rubber bands, however, Alliance is the largest manufacturer of rubber bands in the United States.
On Oct. 12, 2016, Alliance Rubber, who employees 18 veterans, dedicated a walkway in honor of their service and named it Freedom Falls. Freedom Falls is also a tribute to past, present and future veteran associates along with the more than 1 million Americans who gave their lives to keep America free.
Alliance Rubber Co. installed an 80-foot by 40-foot American flag that stands 130 feet tall just off the Martin Luther King Expressway. At the top of the flagpole, there is a gold ball that each of their 175 employees signed. In the evening, people going by will find the flag illuminated by 2,000-watt halogen bulbs. “The flag is a way of showing how proud Alliance employees are to be working and living in this great country,” states the release.
“If you have not seen this beautiful landscape, we would invite you to drive by and see the Freedom Falls walkway where you will find a waterfall that cascades down 200 feet into a pool with a fountain,” it continues. Along this pathway, the public will find boulders, driftwood, cedar groundcover, driftwood roses, azaleas, day lilies, hydrangeas, blueberry bushes that are bearing fruit, red roses and gardenia bushes. There are clumps of ornamental grass bushes located just behind the waterfall. Around the perimeter of the walkway visitors will find a lace leaf Japanese maple, a bloodgood Japanese maple and columnar cedar trees. Bisecting the stream are native stone steps. The crushed stone pathways encompass the entire Freedom Falls walkway.