DEERFIELD TWP. - On a weekend that revels in explosions, Kings Mills is still the king.

"Most kids in the Cincinnati area have heard of Kings Island, but how many have heard of Kings Mills?" asked writer-researcher Thomas D. Schiffer of Florence.

His book Peters and King: The Birth of the Peters Cartridge Co. and the King Powder Co. is a thorough, well-illustrated history of Kings Mills and the companies that produced shells for soldiers in several wars.

Although the town still exists, wedged between developments in growing Warren County, the brick factories do not. They are purposeless leviathans on the banks of the Little Miami.

The town was founded in 1886 to accommodate Peters, which had opened a decade earlier. By 1903, the town was served by an interurban line from Cincinnati.

"There is evidence that rents in the company-owned houses were cheap," Schiffer said. "Seven dollars a month has been mentioned.

"In addition, Kings Mills residents enjoyed utilities supplied by the company over the years. Electric power, in the form of streetlights and home lighting, was available long before it was offered to the surrounding area by a public utility."

Water was provided. So were toilets and sewers.

The town had one of the first county libraries, paved streets and sidewalks, and fire hydrants.

Schiffer has collected dozens of rare photographs of Kings Mills at the turn of the last century.

They include: Kings High School; the Cliff Hotel; The Manse, where some supervisors lived; the King Mansion on King Avenue; the Park Department store (originally a shell factory); Zentmeyer's Livery Stable; the Kings Mills Post Office; the Homestead Hotel, with 100 rooms; a row of homes on College Street; and the "Splendid Corpse," the old factories by the river.

"This is the story of a real company town that was designed to attract and maintain a cadre of effective workers - and it did just that," Schiffer said.

The oversized book, which costs $44.95, is available at the Warren County Historical Society Museum in Lebanon, Ohio Book Store in Cincinnati and Dickens Book Shop in Lebanon.