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The Lehi Sugar Factory - 100 Years in Retrospect
Lehi Sugar Factory, December 1905. Shipler photograph, USHS collections.
LThe Lehi Sugar Factory— 100 Years in Retrospect
BY RICHARD S. VAN WAGONER
A 184-FOOT SMOKESTACK, NORTHERN UTAH COUNTYS tallest landmark, along with a cavernous 1914-built warehouse and coal pits are all that remain of the Lehi Sugar Factory today. Though alone and mute, these stark remnants give silent testimony by their very size to the important role this once-great factory played in shaping the community's economic and social history. Its story is full of color, triumphs, and nostalgia—one always worthy of retelling.1
From its earliest inception, the Utah sugar industry was an official LDS church enterprise. After a dismal 1850s failure, which resulted in a $50,000 loss, church leaders became skeptical of the sugar industry. The Mormon failure was only one of several throughout the country, however. It was not until 1879 that white sugar from beets was first produced at the Alvarado, California, plant of E. H. Dyer.
Mormon horticulturist Arthur Stayner, after experimentation of his own and a visit to several sugar factories about the country, convinced church president Wilford Woodruff and others to organize a company to conduct further investigations. On September 4, 1889, the Utah Sugar Company filed incorporation papers in Salt Lake City.
Encouraged by potential profits, the company s board decided on November 20, 1889, to proceed with a factory. Bids were let The Oxnards from Nebraska bid $450,000 for a three hundred-ton European factory. E. H. Dyer & Co. bid $400,000 for a factory of their own design equipped with machinery to be built by the Kilby Manufacturing Company of Cleveland. The Dyer company, whose principals were mechanical engineers and draftsmen, was awarded the contract on November 5, 1890. The specifications stipulated that the factory be completed by October I, 1891, and that the Dyers manage it for two years after its opening.
Even before the building of the factory began, costs escalated. Capital stock of the company had to be increased to $1,000,000 on October 9, 1890. Though $400,000 was offered for sale immediately, the only substantial subscription came from the Lehi Miff and Stock Company(Thomas K Cutler, president; John Beck, vice president; and William E. Racker, secretary). In addition to their $88,000 stock purchase, the Lehi group tendered other attractive financial inducements, including a thirty-five acre building site on Mulliner's Mill Pond and a $1,000 donation to purchase additional land as needed. The site was admirable from a transportation standpoint since the Rio Grande Western Railway traversed the property and the Union Pacific line bypassed a mile north. Other attractive aspects of the package included perpetual water rights to the mill pond, eighty acres of limestone quarry at Pelican Point, fifteen hundred acres of ground for a company beet farm, and $1,000 worth of labor to improve the road to the factory site.
After visits to several areas, the committee narrowed the choice for the future plant to Lehi and American Fork. Competition between the two towns was keen. The first report favored American Fork Later it was determined that Lehi had an advantage in elevation and water supply, so the committee changed its recommendation. On November 18, 1890, the board of directors voted to build in Lehi. Elisha Peck, Jr., described the town's reaction when it received the news:
American Fork citizens felt the board's reversal was prompted by unfair political pressure. One historian wrote that "a literal social feud existed between the two towns for a long time because of this regrettable incident."3
Groundbreaking for the Lehi factory took place two days after the board's announcement The cornerstone-laying ceremony, held on December 26, 1890, was the biggest event in the town's history. When the special train from Salt Lake arrived at the factory site, dignitaries were greeted by the Lehi Silver Band, the Lehi Choir, the Lehi Glee Club, and nearly two thousand others whose teams and wagons dotted the landscape. Utah Sugar Company president Elias Morris called the meeting to order, then introduced President Wilford Woodruff who said, "I want to say to all Israel that we believe it right to dedicate everything we engage in to the Lord. We have assembled today to lay this cornerstone, as is our custom in establishing all our temples." He then called on George Q. Cannon to offer the dedicatory prayer.
At the close of the invocation Elias Morris suggested three cheers and they were " heartily given, with two additional tigers." A number of speakers were then asked to address the group. The loudest applause was reserved for Lehi's own John Beck, then a member of the sugar company's board of directors! "The next thing we want is the beets," he said to the enthusiastic crowd. "Sugar is in the elements and we should take time to organize them into sugar. I would encourage all of you to give your time to raising sugar beets and let others raise the grain."4
Farmer support was crucial to the plant's success. But the overwhelming worry of the earliest days of the enterprise was insufficient capital. Even before the cornerstone was laid the first $50,000 payment to the Dyers was due. The sugar company was unable to raise the money. A committee was appointed to visit the Dyers to see if an extension could be granted, but without success. Serious consideration was then given to forfeiting the $50,000 deposit and abandoning the entire project But President Woodruff declared that "the inspiration of the Lord to me is to build this factory." So $50,000 from tithing funds was appropriated to pay the bill.5
That covered the January payment only. Additional $50,000 payments were due in February, March, and April. To meet these demands the church's First Presidency borrowed $150,000 from Salt Lake City banks and signed an additional note (along with some twenty Mormon capitalists) to borrow $100,000 from the Wells Fargo Bank of San Francisco. An additional $200,000 in subscriptions was obtained from seven hundred stockholders, but virtually none of these pledges was fully paid for years.
Eventually, more than $260,000 worth of Kilby Manufacturing Company machinery was delivered to Lehi in over a hundred train cars. Some pieces weighing over twenty tons had to be cut down to fit through railroad tunnels en route. After examining the engine room with its huge Corliss engine and multitude of belts, pulleys, and drives, editor Walter Webb registered his astonishment in the November 6, 1891, Lehi Banner at" the mammoth machinery it takes to manufacture so common an article."
Growers, investors, creditors, and factory officials eagerly awaited the fall harvest of 1891 and the completion of the plant, "Can this factory produce granulated sugar." was the question on everyone's mind. James H. Gardner, who boiled that historic first batch of sugar, later recalled that long-ago evening of October 15, 1891:
General manager Thomas Cutler rushed to telephone the Salt Lake Herald "We have just made the first pound of sugar," he proudly proclaimed. "By morning we will have 20 tons ready." Though Cutler's expectation was not reached, twenty thousand pounds of sugar were sacked and placed on a Union Pacific Railroad car the following day. When it arrived in Salt Lake City it was transferred to three oxen-pulled drays, symbolic of the pioneering spirit of the sugar business. The procession delivered the sugar to various retailers under the sign "First Carload of Granulated Sugar Made by the Utah Sugar Company."
As part of the October 16 celebration in Lehi, Broadbent & Son sold the first sack of locally produced sugar in their mercantile and forever after swore off cane sugar. To add to the festive atmosphere. Cutler, who was also the local LDS bishop, joined J. C. Jensen and Agnes Anderson in holy matrimony in a ceremony performed in the sugar factory.7
Despite the technical success of the sugar operation, some skepticism lingered. One Salt Lake City drummer,loitering in a mercantile, began vilifying " Lehi sugar," saying it had a yellowish tinge, tasted like beets, and so on." Hand this man a scoopful of the California sugar," the proprietor ordered as he winked at a clerk "That," said the taster," is the stuff! That's sugar, none of your beet juice about that; see the difference in color." The proprietor then cheerfully replied that all sugar in the store was manufactured at the Lehi Sugar Factory.
Long after Utah Sugar Company began shipping its product to eastern markets, some buyers still sniffed at western sugar. At a beet sugar exhibit at the 1897 World's Fair in Chicago one women asked, "Is it sweet" "Can it be used for cooking?" inquired another. One highbrow even insinuated that the sugar look like "bleached sand."9
But detractors were soon won over by the plant's success. The first campaign, which ran from October 12 to December 17, processed nearly 10,000 tons of beets into 12,500 on hundred-pound bags of sugar. Demand for the product was so great that back orders often days were common, and the factory could not fill all orders received during theseasort Despite the successful campaign, however, sales were hardly sufficient to pay operating costs, let alone the heavy burden of interest and dividends.
Sugar company leaders feared that local farmers might not plant beets the second year because the yield had been less than projected. But throughout the following winter and spring LDS church leaders used their influence to convince growers to cooperate. Over six hundred farmers signed contracts in 1892, agreeing to put eighteen hundred acres into beets.
Despite the thick black smoke that poured from the factory smokestacks, Lehi citizens loved the industry. "Again we hear the shrill sound of the Sugar Factory whistle," reported editor Walter Webb in the May 10, 1894, Lehi Banner, "which we can pride ourselves has grown out of the protection system and has given many a poor man employment that would otherwise have been in need last winter and might now have joined Carter's Industrial Army, and go to Washington and ask the government authorities to give them employment or they would have to starve."
The Utah Republican platform of 1894 called for free speech, free silver at sixteen to one, woman suffrage, home industry for Utah, and protection (through tariffs) for the West The Lehi Banner, which advertised itself as the "official organ of the Utah Sugar Company," continually editorialized in favor of the sugar industry. On November 1, 1894, the paper urged, "down with the [sugar] trust; do not buy one pound of sugar that is not made in Utah. . . . Rally round the management and directors of our factory, like men would do if they were fighting for their country's cause."
By far the most important development of 1895 for the company was the selling of $360,000 worth of first mortgage bonds, with the factory and other real estate as security, to Joseph Banigan of Providence, Rhode Island. Thereafter Utah Sugar Company was able to meet all its financial obligations. At the end of the 1895-96 campaign, in addition to employing a hundred factory workers and buying the beets of six hundred growers, the company paid its first cash dividend.
The success of the sugar factory had a dramatic effect on Lehi's financial well-being. Between 1890 and 1896 nearly thirty new businesses sprang into existence. One established just south of the factory was the Lehi Cattle Feeding Company and its affiliate, the Utah Slaughtering Company, owned by the Bradshaw brothers, John F. and Richard. This enterprise, commonly thought to be the largest cattle feeding lot between Omaha and San Francisco, consisted of ten large corrals, each 25 x 350 feet, where two thousand head of cattle (and later sheep) were fattened for the market The animals were fed beet pulp purchased from the sugar factory for 50 cents per ton. Initially the cattle hesitated to eat the smelly wet waste product so the stockmen withheld other food until the hungry animals developed a taste for the pulp.10
In 1896, a depression year, the factory purchased more than $200,000 worth of beets from local farmers and also paid out $85,000 for labor. In addition, substantial sums were paid for railroad freighting, coal, lime rock, sulphur, and tallow—much of which went into the local economy. Charles F. Saylor, an agent of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, commented on the "local prosperity" that had resulted from the sugar factory's success: "It may be said that there is no one in [Lehi] desiring employment during the growing season of the sugar beet that can not secure it readily."11
Further demonstrating Lehi's prosperity, the December 15, 1896, Lehi Banner reported no delinquent tax list for the year, a fact directly attributed to the sugar industry. Likely no local enterprise since then, with the possible exception of General Refractories, has provided Lehi with such long-term financial rewards. And no structure in the town's history was as imposing as the main sugar factory building. "The great sugar factory is an inspiring thing to look upon," wrote the editor of the Lehi Banner on April 16, 1896. The building was 184 feet long, 84 feet wide, and three stories high. The annex, which contained the boilers, boneblack house, and lime kiln, was 180 feet long and 38 feet wide. The portion of the annex housing the boneblack and lime kiln areas was three stories high, while the other hundred feet containing the steam plant was only a single story.
North ofthe main building were the beet sheds, each 500 feet long and 24 feet wide. The combined storage capacity of the eight sheds in 1896 was 20,000 tons. There were also four pulp silos, each 180x24 feet and 10 feet deep. So much coal was lost to spontaneous combustion when piled in the open that a water-filled coal bin 250 feet and 48 feet wide was constructed.
Northwest of the factory was an 80 x 65-foot frame boarding house with a 24 x 60-foot annex that provided accommodations for fifty men. The mill pond, which furnished most of the plant's water, was fed by natural springs that produced four million gallons each vent)'-four hours. In addition, eight artesian wells, from 40 to 156 feet deep, added five hundred gallons per minute to the factory's water supply.12
The process through which dirty beets became pure sugar was a source of amazement to most observers. Although production procedures were greatly modified over the years, those early Lehi campaigns make fascinating studies of pioneer ingenuity. Once the beets arrived at the factory they were weighed, then stored in the beet sheds that had frost-proof double walls filled with cinders and a dirt-covered roof They also had sloping bottoms, through which ran a stream of water confined in a flume with a movable covering. Later, because of extensive spoilage, the company began storing the beets in the open with bullrush coverings to prevent freezing.
As the beets were needed for processing they were floated to the main building through the flume and by means of a fourteen- foot wheel were lifted to the washer. There they were subjected by means of propeller arms to a thorough washing, after which they were automatically ejected into an elevator that carried them to the third floor where they fell into a sheer. In this machine the beets were cut into long v-shaped slices ("cossettes") one eighth of an inch thick and five eighths of an inch wide. From the sheer the beets were transported by gravity through a chute to the diffusion battery (twelve wrought-iron tanks connected by piping and valves, each holding 2.5 tons of sliced beets) where the sugar was extracted by a series of leachings with hot water.
The dark-colored juice then flowed into an automatic register that measured the quantity and temperature and drew out a sample for use in the laboratory. From the automatic register the syrup went into a heater (calorisator) where it was warmed to 190°F before being conveyed to one often carbonators, immense iron tanks eight by five feet and nine feet deep. Here the juice was clarified by adding a mixture of lime and carbon dioxide gas. These chemical agents combined with impurities in the juice and precipitated into the bottom of the pan. The juice was then pumped through a mammoth filter press; this very important step removed the residue of the clarification, which was then discarded.
The clarified juice was then piped into a quadruple effect evaporator eighteen feet long, twelve feet wide, and twelve feet high where excess water was boiled out The liquid was then passed through one of the twenty-five-ton boneblack (charcoal) filters. (This step was eliminated in 1893.) The molasses was then treated with sulphur gas to "clarify" and improve crystallization.
The syrup was boiled as thick as the boiler dared before it was released into the mixing pan, a tank twenty feet in length with a stirrer at the bottom. The sugar was then separated from the molasses by five forty-inch Weston centrifuges, each spinning fifteen hundred times a minute. The molasses was spun out and the wet sugar conveyed into a passed steam, heated the syrup to 139 degrees. Here it was boiled down into melada, the technical name for syrup which is 75 percent sugar and 25 percent molasses.
The size and hardness of the sugar grains were determined by the skill of the sugar boiler—a man held in high esteem. If the temperature was too high, the sugar would be hard and brittle (and would bring a lower price). If finished at a low temperature it would be graded firstclass.
The syrup was boiled as thick as the boiler dared before it was released into the mixing pan, a tank twenty feet in length with a stirrer at the bottom. The sugar was then separated from the molasses by five forty-inch Weston centrifuges, each spinning fifteen hundred times a minute. The molasses was spun out and the wet sugar conveyed into a Hershey sugar dryer, a revolving drum twenty feet long and six feet in diameter. One hundred pounds of dried sugar was then packed into a burlap bag lined with white cotton. The entire process from beet to sugar took approximately thirty-six hours. 13
The molasses spun off from the white sugar was boiled again to make brown sugar. This was slow to granulate, and since there were no crystallizers in the early years of the plant, it was run from the brown "pan" to one of the two eighty-ton settling tanks where it was allowed to stand over the summer until the sugar granulated and settled to the bottom of the tank The liquor was then drained off and the brown sugar removed with a hand paddle.
Though processes were eventually discovered that extracted even more sugar from the waste molasses, in the earliest days of the factory "second and third syrup" was difficult to dispose of Much was dumped into Spring Creek and carried to Utah Lake. For a time a vinegar and alcohol distillery was considered, but this never materialized. An interesting use of this waste product was found in surfacing Lehi roads. The molasses was impregnated with potash salts and mixed with cinders from the boiler room. "At first the molasses showed a tendency to ooze up through the gravel," noted an observer, "but the application of an extra coating of gravel remedied this and made the road as smooth as a floor and as hard as pavement."14
Prior to the 1898 campaign the most beets processed in a single day was 435 tons on October 7, 1896. An incentive program was established at the beginning of the 1898 season whereby each factory worker received an additional 10 percent of his daily wage for a four-hundred ton day. During the 1899 campaign the factory processed thirty-six thousand tons of beets—a new record. This efficiency, plus the fact that the Dingley Tariff was so favorable toward the sugar industry, convinced the Utah Sugar Company to double the capacity of the Lehi plant
The massive 1899-1900 building project not only physically doubled the size of the plant but also increased its capacity to a thousand tons of beets per day. A beet-cutting station built at Springville was later followed by similar stations at Bingham Junction (West Jordan), Spanish Fork, Provo, and Pleasant Grove. At these auxiliary stations beets were chopped into pulp, mixed with milk of lime, and pumped to Lehi through pipelines for processing. The process was later abandoned, however, because of serious pipeline malfunctions.
On October 22, 1900, a special Rio Grande Western train, carrying more than a dozen dignitaries including George Q. Cannon, president of the Utah Sugar Company, stopped briefly at the Lehi Sugar Factory. Manager Thomas R. Cutler, superintendent Henry Vallez, chief engineer M. W. Ingalls, field superintendent George Austin, Mayor Mosiah Evans, E. R. Patterson, G.A. Smith, and James Kirkham climbed aboard. After touring the new Springville cutting station, the group returned to Lehi for dinner at the sugar factory's boarding house.
At the conclusion of the meal, Cutler led the group on a tour of the enlarged plant One of the most interesting features of the steam operated factory was its twenty-two boilers, each with its own smokestack One hundred twenty-five tons of coal were burned each day, and as many as sixty carloads of coal might be awaiting unloading.
The excitement ofthe sugar factory in operation attracted scores of Lehi children on weekends. Plant management continually warned
parents to keep their offspring home to avoid accidents. Six-year-old Harold Racker was killed at the factor) in October 1898.15 Even grown men were not safe from injury at the factory. Superintendent James H. Gardner noted that a German sugar maker visiting the Lehi works had said: "If you were in Germany you would be thrown in jail. You've got exposed machinery all over the place. You've got hazards every way you turn. Why in Germany you would be having someone killed in a plant like this every day." Gardner replied: "In the United States, people exercise common sense and don't go blundering into exposed machinery or fall off stairs without railings."16 But numerous injuries, including one to Gardner himself, and several deaths show evidence that the plant was a hazardous working environment
Like other agriculture related enterprises, the sugar industry was subject to political manipulation. The Underwood Tariff of 1913 gave better rates to cane sugar than it did to beet sugar. Despite the rumors of a rapidly declining beet sugar market, the July 25, 1914, Banner wrote: "They say that the recent buying of a half million dollars of sugar sacks by the Mormon church would indicate that the sugar business was not going to the bow-wows." The foresight was uncanny. The following month war broke out in Europe, market conditions changed almost instantly, and sugar prices escalated worldwide.
U and I management was quick to gear up operations in Lehi and elsewhere. Before 1914 ended, a huge fourteen million-pound capacity warehouse was completed at the Lehi factory. The February 27, 1915, American Fork Citizen contained manager Thomas Cudefs announcement of $400,000 worth of improvements on U and I factories, including a $100,000 expenditure on the Lehi plant (The 184-foot smoke stack still standing in 1991, was built at this time.) The fall 1915 campaign, processed 131,401 tons of beets into 374,743 hundred pound bags of sugar and proved to be the peak production year.
From the first campaign, once the sugar factory began operations in the fall it did not close until all beets were processed. This meant two twelve hour shifts seven days a week with no break These working conditions, particularly near the end of a campaign, resulted in high absenteeism. For thirty-one years, however, no change was made in the work schedule. As the 1921 season started, considerable worker sentiment was expressed for three eight-hour shifts rather than the two twelve hour shifts of the past But management adamantly opposed the idea. On October 18, 1921, factory workers went on strike over the issue. Lehi businessmen were supportive of the action, passing a motion " that the businessmen of Lehi recommend that the company grant to their Lehi employees an eight hour day."
Lehi Mayor James H. Gardner and sugar factory superintendent David Hodge met with employees later that afternoon and reaffirmed the company's position that "there could be no change in the working conditions at the mill." The officials also stated that unless the men returned to work the following day, the facility would be closed for the season and the beets shipped elsewhere for processing. But even eloquent pleas by state senator Edward Southwick and A. J. Evans of the Alpine Stake Presidency could not change the workers' position.
When the whistle blew the following morning at seven o' clock only a handful of men were on the job. Factory officials sent them home and closed the plant Utah Sugar Company officials huddled with state officials and decided to send Thomas R Cuder to Lehi to seek a compromise. The October 27 Lehi Sun reported that shortly before noon on Saturday, October 23, "the Lehi sugar factory resumed cutting beets and making sugar on the three shift plan." The workers, who had won their point, received the same rate of pay as was received on the two- shift plan—30¢, 32 1/2¢, and 35¢ per hour.
As if to demonstrate that there were no hard feelings, factory workers began to turn out sugar at an unprecedented pace. The November 24, 1921, Lehi Sun reported that on November 20 the factory sacked 4,754 bags of sugar, a record equal to half of the sugar made during the entire 1891 campaign. To illustrate how much sugar this was, the paper noted:
Despite the paper's enthusiasm, the days of the Lehi Sugar Factory were numbered. For years growers had mistakenly been told that beets did not impoverish the land, that crop rotation was not essential. This erroneous idea led to the spread of parasitic nematodes (micre scopic round worms) which seriously infested local beet crops.
The other plant disease that contributed to the eventual closure of the Lehi Sugar Factory was "curly top," caused by the insect Eutettix (more recently, Circulifer) tenellus, commonly known as the white fly. The insect pierces the beet leaves with a liollow proboscis to suck juice, thereby spreading a virus that causes the plant to wither and curl. In 1917 scientists of the U. S. Department Agriculture became interested in the problem and slowly began to develop strains of beets that were resistent to this insect But local fields, devastated by the infestations, brought little or no income to farmers, and fewer and fewer of them were willing to risk their livelihood on sugar beets. There was not enough harvest in 1925 to open the Lehi factory.
The sad news reported in the August 19,1926, Lehi Sun was that the factory would again not open that fall. Although the season had started with fairly good prospects, the dry, hot season and "curly top" resulted in complete crop failure in Utah and Idaho. The Lehi factory was ordered to lay off all year-round help with the exception of a small office force and temporary sugar loaders and to curtail unnecessary expense.
Pleas were made annually for local farmers to plant more beets. The January 5, 1928, Lehi Sun asked, "Will the Lehi Sugar Factory Run During 1928?" The answer was no. Four thousand acres of beets were necessary to operate the factory and farmers were still not willing to take the risk The Lehi Sugar Factory never reopened. In the 1930s the machinery was removed from the plant and installed in other U and I factories, with the bulk of it going to Toppenish, Washington.
During its thirty-four-year history the Lehi Sugar Factory had an average annual run of 98 days. The longest campaign—1909— was 138 days. The final production year of 1924, though not as profitable as the peak year of 1915, resulted in the processing of 21,656 tons of beets which were harvested from 3,352 acres. Sackers processed 93,445 hundred-pound bags during this campaign.
From 1891 to 1924 the Lehi district produced 2,572,357 tons of beets from which the factory extracted 6,987,242 hundred-pound bags of white sugar. The Utah Sugar Company and Utah-Idaho Sugar Company (formed in 1907) spent an estimated $30,000,000 in the Lehi district on beets, labor, and supplies. 17
In 1939 the Lehi factory buildings, with the exception of the warehouse, blacksmith shops, and other storage buildings, were sold to Bothwell Mining Company of Mercur. Many of the smaller buildings were moved to various locations in Lehi, and much of the brick from the main factory was used to build the Joseph Smith Memorial building on the Brigham Young University campus and the Lehi First Ward Chapel. 18
For a time huge masses of brick disconnected boilers, pipes and valves, and weird off-shaped castings were scattered about the sugar factory grounds. During World War II the property was one of the proposed sites for the steel plant later constructed at Geneva. And in the early 1950 s it was rumored that a large uranium refinery would be built there. Morris Clark managed the U and I storage facilities at the large 1914-built warehouse for years. Many Lehi boys stacked sugar in that massive, wonderfully aromatic cavern. In 1979 the property was sold to Thomas Peck and Sons Trucking Company. They presently use it for storing equipment and huge piles of firebrick clay.
Children growing up today will likely never again see a sugar beet If there is any justice to that, it comes from knowing they will also never crawl along those endless rows, short-handled hoe in hand, thinning those leafy vegetables. Only a person who has experienced that particular form of torture can with me shout "hurrah" at that prospect
NOTES
Mr. Van Wagoner, a Lehi native, is the author of numerous publications on Utah and Mormon history.
1 My personal affection for this place is lifelong As a child I clambered over the ruins and swam in the nearby mill pond As an adult I often seek solitude there. My grandfather and namesake, Richard T Smith, was a boilerman at the factory from 1891 to 1924 Though he died a decade before I was born, my mother often related stories of his employment there Had I been born a generation eadier I would likely have written a book detailing the sugar factory's history. But Leonard Arrington, Utah-Idaho Sugar Company chronicler, did that twenty-five years ago (Beet Sugar in the West: A History of the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 18911966, University of Washington Press, 1966; see also his excellent article, "Utah's Pioneer Beet Sugar Plant The Lehi Factory of Utah Sugar Company," Utah Historical Quarterly 34 [Spring 1966]; 95-120) With due respect to Dr Arrington, however, in this centennial year I would like to retrace the historic pathway of my hometown's best-known industry.
2 Evona L Miner, Relva Laney, and Lileth Peck, History of Elisha Peck, Jr, and Elizabeth Jane Wilson (n.p Remington Press, Inc, 1982), p 47.
3 Fred G Taylor, A Saga of Sugar, Being a Story of the Romance and Development of Beet Sugar in the Rocky Mountain West (Salt Lake City, 1944), p. 76.
4 Deseret Semi-Weekly News, December 30, 1890.
5 Deseret Evening News, October 22, 1900.
6 Taylor, A Saga of Sugar, p 91.
7 Salt Lake Herald, October 16, 18, 1891.
9 Lehi Banner, August 17, 1897.
10 Ibid., October 17, 1895.
11 Special Report on the Beet-Sugar Industry in the United States (Washington, D.C., 1898), pp. 169, 184.
12 Deseret Evening News, May 23, 29, October 8, 1891; Salt Lake Tribune, October 8, 1891; Lehi Banner, April 16, 1896.
13 Salt Lake Herald October 8, 1891; Arrington, "Utah's Pioneer Beet Sugar Plant," pp 114-17; William H Holabird, American Beet Sugar: Instructions for Field Work from Seed to Harvest Los Angeles, 1898), pp 31-43.
14 Arrington, Beet Sugar in the West, p. 31.
15 Lehi Banner, October 25, 1898.
16 Lehi Free Press, December 23, 1949.
17 Arrington, Beet Sagarin the West, pp 182-83.
18 Lehi Free Press, April 13, 1939; Lehi Sun, December 1, 1938.
