The Utah-Idaho Sugar Company was a large sugar beet processing company based in Utah. It was notable for providing a valuable cash crop to Utah and surrounding states.
See Beet Field and Sugar Factory, Garland
And History of the Sugar Industry in Utah
U&I Sugar was essentially founded by Mormon pioneers in Utah and Idaho; the industry expanded to six states and sold to 24 states.
For many years, one of the most recognizable brands on store shelves in the West was U&I sugar. U&I produced sugar extracted from sugar beets. In the 1850s, Mormon John Taylor formed the Deseret Manufacturing Company, predecessor to U&I. It built its first factory at Salt Lake City, but it failed. Further studies were made and the Utah Sugar Company formed on September 4, 1889. The factory made its first sugar on October 15, 1891.
The Utah Sugar Company expanded into the Bear River Valley in 1901 and built a factory at Garland, which was completed in 1903. Four smaller sugar companies built plants at Lincoln (near Idaho Falls), Sugar City, Nampa, and Blackfoot, all in Idaho, in 1903-05. On July 18, 1907, these four companies merged with the Utah Sugar Company to form the U&I Sugar Company with $13 million in capital. In Utah, U&I built plants at Elsinore and Payson.
The beet sugar industry was threatened in 1913, when the U.S. removed tariffs from cane sugar imported from Cuba, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Phillippines. U&I reduced salaries by 10% of many staff to stay even. Then World War I broke out in 1914 and prices went up. New plants were built at Spanish Fork and West Jordan, Utah, in 1916. E. H. Dyer & Company of Cleveland built these two plants, as they did most of U&I’s plants.
Other factories built during this time with varying degrees of success were Brigham City, Moroni, Delta, Springville, and Centerfield, Utah; Grants Pass, Oregon; Rigby and Shelley, Idaho; and North Yakima, Toppenish, and Sunnyside, Washington.
After the war, prices dropped again and U&I struggled to get by. The Mormon church bought some stock to help. The War Finance Corporation loaned the company $10 million. Throughout the pre-Depression years, the company suffered from curly top, a disease spread by an white fly. The North Yakima and Sunnyside plants were closed and never re-opened. In 1924, the entire district was hit and the Lehi, Elsinore, Rigby, and Payson plants were dismantled.
The devastation caused the USDA to devote more money to research in 1928 to find insect resistant varieties. By 1934, crop plantings were the best they had been in years. Things were going good enough to rebuild at Toppenish. In 1934, U&I owned 15 factories.
By 1966, there were only five factories left: Garland, Idaho Falls, West Jordan, Toppenish, and Moses Lake. These produced five plants produced 2-3 times the volume of the earlier plants. The company also established sugar distribution centers at Seattle, Omaha, Kansas City, Missouri, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Tigard, Oregon. Nearly all the seed came from a beet seed processing plant at St. George, Utah.
Beginning in the late 1970s, U&I began to shut down its business. Factories were sold or dismantled. Former beet acreage lay fallow or was planted with other crops. Beet sugar could no longer compete with increasing imports of cane sugar as well as super cheap corn syrup. Slowly the U&I brand disappeared from the stores.
Utah-Idaho Sugar Company
8 comments:
Neat stuff! I too remember U&I Sugar when I was growing up in the 1970's. I lived near the U&I Sugar rail to truck transfer/distribution place in Tigard Oregon. I took some pictures of it back in the 1980's (when it still existed).
Sheldon
It really is interesting...the old history that goes with these old buildings. There aren't very many of them left standing. Living in Oregon and so close to a distribution center, it is no wonder you remember U&I Sugar! :) I bet your pictures are interesting!
My brother and I worked at the Garland factory during college. I started as a swamper (cleanup) and progressed to the presses (large high pressure filters) and finally to the spinners (centrifuges that spun the remaining liquid out of the sugar crystals). The spinners carried about half a ton of sugar liquid mix and spun at high speed. One story they told us was a time when a spinner broke loose from vibration and tore out the factory wall on its way out of the factory. We were very careful after that story. Good memories of that place even though it was hard work.
Unbelievable! That spinner taking out the wall like that! The damage must've been substantial and no doubt people were probably hurt! A half ton of sugar liquid mix! I drove by that factory the other evening, on my way for a walk, and someone is using it as a shop. They are welding in there now. I will have to get a picture and add to this blog. I'm glad you posted. I love hearing about the old history that goes with these buildings.
The plant at Sugar Factory Road in Shelley, Idaho is near where I live. We have lived in Idaho for forty years and it has been closed since then as far as I know. There is still a lot of machinery there and it is locked up tight. I would like to know if there are any plans for it except to let it sit.
I grew up across the street as a kid, before; I believe national guard or army surplus purchased it... us kids used to play inside, super spooky and giant inside, also I remember French's used it as a storage for potatoes for long time until one summer they started welding bars on the windows and moved all that army surplus that you see there today...
I grew up in the 60s and 70s near the sugar factory in Idaho Falls. My Dad was an assistant master mechanic, who is in charge of maintenance for a shift. In 1978, we moved to Garland where Dad became the master mechanic, who is in charge of all maintenance at the factory. I was the one who heard the factories were to be closed after the Fall campaign, and called my Dad with the news. It was a very sad day for all the workers at U&I Sugars four remaining factories. Dad passed away last spring at 91. To his last, he claimed that being the master mechanic at Garland was the best year of his career.
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