Send Gift Baskets to Stalowa Wola, Poland

Today’s Stalowa Wola area is part of the historic Polish province of Lesser Poland. This city was located near the border with Red Ruthenia in the southeast corner of the Sandomierz Voivodeship of the Kingdom of Poland. Stalowa Wola was built where the village of Pławo once stood, between the ancient towns of Nisko and Rozwadów. Early references to Pawo occur in the 15th century. It was built before 1358 at Przyszów when King Wladyslaw Jagielo built his hunting lodge. It was a royal village in the late 15th century. A battle between Polish and Swedish armies took place in 1656 in Pawo. Stefan Czarniecki surrounded King Charles Gustav’s Swedish troops at the San and Vistula (see Swedish invasion of Poland).

It used to be part of Sandomierz Voivodeship until the Partitions of Poland. Between 1772 and 1918, it was part of the Austrian province of Galicia and remained an insignificant, privately owned village. Early in 1937, the government of the Second Polish Republic approved the Central Industrial Area project, which included the construction of a brand-new steel mill and a workers’ settlement. Some mill departments were operational before World War II, and several blocks of flats had been constructed. The Southern Works, as the mill was then called, began construction in dense pine forests around Pławo in March 1937. Artillery cannons were among the products manufactured at the plant.

In World War II, Stalowa Wola was one of the centers of the Home Army. Stalowa Wola’s town charter was granted on April 1, 1945, after the Red Army captured the settlement in August 1944. Huta Stalowa Wola was renamed in 1948, and in 1953, a separate urban county named Stalowa Wola was formed. Rozwadów and Charzewice villages were annexed in 1973 and 1977, respectively. It had branches throughout southern Poland, from Radomsko to Strzyow, when it peaked in the 1970s, employing 35,000 people. There is also a large power plant in Stalowa Wola, which was opened in the spring of 1939. Workers protested in the city in 1988 (see the 1988 Polish strikes for more information). Stalowa Wola has a population of 60,000, making it the third-largest city in the voivodeship.