Goodbye SS Independence
February 9th, 2008
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Goodbye SS IndependenceFebruary 9th, 2008
Steam Power in Colorado’s Sugar FactoriesNovember 12th, 2007![]() These Detroit Rotograte Stokers work great at continuously discharging ash from the burning of coal. These stokers at the Great Western’s Longmont refinery were part of a much larger system of boilers that fed steam power for the entire factory (photo copyright Jon Haeber).
![]() Men stand near the cossette slicing machine at Eaton, Colorado ca. 1910 (courtesy Denver Public Library). This incredible steam power was utilized throughout the factories’ multiple rooms and corridors through a complex system of drive-shafts. workers could engage or disengage shafts through a series of levers and belt-transfer guides. Despite its incredible, 3,000 horsepower system of steam strength, these factories still employed 300-500 workers of various tasks — even their own chemistry and assay departments to measure the sugar content of incoming beets. ![]() This box shaped contraption at the Longmont sugar refinery perplexed me, but I could only assume that it was pressurized, as indicated by the rivets and portholes (photo copyright Jon Haeber). Corporate Consolidation of Sugar: A Massive IndustryIndeed, sugar in the eastern foothills of the Rockies was far from a small-town cottage industry. William May, who wrote The Great Western Sugarlands, claims that Colorado’s sugar industry produced more revenue than mining in the state. Combine the rich sugar content of Colorado’s beets with government-provided bounty for domestic producers of sugar — add the lynchpin of it all, the Dingley Act of 1897 (which levied a heavy tax on foreign sugar) — and you’ve got the perfect storm for a boom in beet production. ![]() The factory at Eaton, CO. Notice the effluence coming from the smokestack. This is the lime kiln. The boiler house is outside of view from the image (photo courtesy Denver Public Library). It was a perfect storm that was ripe for H.O. Havemeyer’s picking. Havemeyer did this as tactfully as any robber-baron could: through an extremely complicated system of acquisitions and alliances using his American Sugar Company Trust. As Eric Twitty in Silver Wedge so aply puts it, the trust “converted the Colorado sugar industry into a coordinated sugar-manufacturing machine, which it loosely balanced with its sugar sources elsewhere in the United States,” among which included half of Spreckels stake in sugar from Hawaii and California. ![]() The Great Western Sugar Company fell victim to the growth of artificial sweeteners, foreign imports, and the dissolution of government subsidies. Only a few select sugar refineries in Colorado remain in operation (Photo copyright Jon Haeber).
Eventually, however, even corporate consolidation and efficiencies couldn’t mean the continued survival of an outdated commodity source. One by one, the factories across Colorado closed down. Corporate neglect may have partly been the reason, but it ultimately became simple geography. Once artificial sweeteners, sugarcane, and corn syrup took their stranglehold on the American sweetening industry sugar beets became a thing of the past. By 1985, all but one of Colorado’s grand sugar refineries had shuttered. ![]() The workshop at Eaton Refinery. If you want esoterica, look no further than this workshop at Eaton’s sugar refinery. Here, were a number of whos-its and whats-its galore. One could only wonder what the worker in this workshop did in a typical day. No doubt there are plenty of opportunities for idle tinkering (Photo copyright Jon Haeber). Further Reading on the Sugar Factories of ColoradoSilver Wedge: The Sugar Beet Industry in Fort Collins Historic Markers of Colorado — History of Sugar Beets in the State Suspicious Monopolistic Agreement Between Great Western and H.O. Hevemeyer Processing Sugar from Beets in the Early 1900sNovember 10th, 2007
![]() A map of the Longmont Sugar Refinery. Note the Steffens House (where MSG would later be made from beets), the incredibly large coal pits (this will be described more in Part III), and the extremely efficient train track layout. Beet Washing and Flume TransportFirst beets were both washed and transported through a series of flumes, but in order for them to be processed they needed to be brought to the top floor of the factory through a series of hoppers. Time was of the essence. As soon as the beets came in contact with water, they’d begin to diffuse their sugar. ![]() Sugar beets needed to be carried to the top floor for the first step in processing. This required the use of an elaborate system of belts and flumes. Pictured above is an inclined conveyer that likely brought the beets up to a higher level. This conveyer is located at Eaton, Colorado (photo copyright Jon Haeber). Cutting into Cossettes, Sublimation, and Lime InjectionOnce on top, the beets went through a series of cutting machines, which sliced the beets into thin v-shaped pieces known as cossettes. The cossettes were fed into vast diffusion chambers, which were held under pressure, fed with boiling water, and allowed to steep for some time in order to sublimate the sugar from the cossettes. The spent cossettes were discarded, the steeped water was further brought into a soup of lime in order to purify the liquid-like sugar substance; then through a series of framed kelly filters; after which the filtered liquid was sent to a set of heat exchangers to keep it liquefied. ![]() When one is in a sugar refinery, the sensory overload becomes overwhelming. These machines, like many in the refinery, perplexed me. However, I could reasonably deduce that — since they were on a lower story of the building, they were not the cutting (or cossette) cylinders. My educated guess says they are cylinders for griding lime rock. The pipe maze protruding from the cylinders probably sent the liquefied slurry of lime to be mixed with the sublimated sugar (photo copyright Jon Haeber). Carbonation for Precipitation, Filtration, and Sulfur StationEven after this process, the liquid, though containing no solids, remained a base due to the lime process. In order to solve this problem, the liquid was sent through carbonation tanks, where carbonic acid bubbled up through the juice, balancing the pH level and removing the lime. From there, it was sent to another set of filters, more heat exchangers, and on to the sulfur station.
It was at the sulfur station that the pH was further balanced and the sugar’s color was bleached white. Filtered one last time, it had finally became what the industry termed as “standard liquor,” containing a sugar content of 50-60%, but still in liquid form. �
Evaporation and Centrifuge DryingIn order to crystalize the liquid, the super-saturated liquid was sent through a series of evaporators, then to some centrifuges, and finally off to the market.
And that’s the simplified version! For the complete step-by-step process, visit this PDF document on Fort Collins sugar beet history. Editor’s Addendum for Part II:As you see, a sugar factory was not only a multfarious process, it was also capital intensive. The Coloradans had a bounty, surely, but without the help of big money and intensive politicial lobbying, these factories would have never arisen from the Great Western Plains. In our third and final installment we’ll look at how the steam engine transformed the refineries in Colorado, along with corporate consolidation by Big Sugar headed by H.O. Havemeyer. Southern California Wildfires and Santa Ana WindsOctober 23rd, 2007
I am a child of Southern California. Though I feel more out of place there than anywhere else in the world, it is the place of my birth. As a child I remember the falling ashes and the smoke-engulfed sky. I remember the floods and the Rodney King riots, and the Northridge earthquake. This past weekend, I was down in Ventura visiting family. It was a bright, clear day. We went into the theater to catch Across the Universe, the new movie inspired by the music of the Beatles. As we exited the corridors of the theater everything seemed darker and more orange in hue. I walked outside and ashes were falling like snowflakes. Tiny bits of burnt mesquite and tumbleweed floated through the sky. It never snows in Ventura, so the experience was all the more surreal. It was only after listening to the radio for a few minutes that I realized the gravity of the situation. I could guess how severe the problem would be. I knew the fires would burn and continue burning; the previous night the news had announced the arrival of the Santa Ana winds, whose zephyrs of hell blow Westward, defying all logic about the proverbial “ocean breeze.” Raymond Chandler in “Red Wind” describes the winds eloquently:
The Santa Ana’s hot, spine-tingling breeze comes from the East due to high pressure systems in the deserts. It’s a common misconception that these winds are heated by the desert, but the majority of the warmth is a result of adiabatic heating — the effect of air dumping from high altitudes into low altitudes; the subsequent compression of air causes it to warm up and expel any humidity.By the time these winds reach the California lowland coast, they’re bone-dry and they make you feel as if you’re walking on the face of Mars. They’re also the ideal winds for fires — and as they reached record levels above 75 mph last weekend, one could only guess what would follow.
As of now, two have died, 1,200 homes and business are destroyed, a historic castle is in ruins, and 300,000 acres look like a mercurial firescape at this moment. It is a uniquely geographic weather anomaly with devastating results. Why do people live in these places? Why are the most desirable home sites often the most disastrous? I only mean to pose the question. I have no answers. Further Reading: BBC News: California Santa Ana Fires Wikipedia on Santa Ana Winds Colorado Sugar Beet History & ArchitectureOctober 20th, 2007![]() The Longmont Sugar Refinery, once one of the Great Western Sugar Company’s largest factories — shuttered in 1978 (photo copyright Jon Haeber).
In Colorado there is a linear north-south collection of abandoned skeletons following the railroads outside of Denver. These brick edifices are decaying reminders of Colorado’s agricultural renaissance. Bricks collapse from four-story parapets and railroads are buried in weeds and detritus, but behind the decay and overgrowth is the history of the greatest sugar magnate in American history: The Great Western Sugar Company. ![]() This is a ledger book from the Great Western Sugar Co. Eaton factory. Eaton is named after the tenth governor of Colorado, Benjamin Eaton, who was instrumental in getting the irrigation infrastructure set up that would later serve the beet industry well (photo copyright Jon Haeber). These massive brick buildings are like nothing I’ve seen in my life. Early in Colorado’s history, the vast expanse of barren land was considered a desert. Famous New York Times Editor, Horace Greeley, described the Colorado plains as a “land of starvation.” This didn’t stop Greeley from endeavoring to establish a utopian colony there. His plan funded the beginnings of place of high moral standards and temperance. Never one to shy away from self-promotion, the utopian colony was named “Greeley.” After the Land Grant Act of 1862, thousands of families flocked to the Colorado plains in search of land worth subduing (in a biblical sense). At first, wheat was the cash crop, but disaster stuck in the 1890s when the price of wheat plummeted and this bread basket of America needed a new boon basket — beets would be Colorado’s salvation. By 1900, there were brick buildings arising to process the growing influx of beet from the fields. The citadels of these towns had become tall, brick smokestacks spewing steam and spitting out refined sugar. The Ecology of Growing Sugar BeetsThere are only a few places in the world perfectly suited for the sugar beet horticulture. Sugar beets require a specific balance of light, minerals, and water in order to produce a minimum of 12% sugar content by mass — and this balance must follow a specific seasonal schedule. The plains along the Front Range of Colorado had this balance unlike anywhere else in the world. In fact, the balance was so perfect that some areas featured an alarming 17% sugar content by mass. ![]() A young man sits near a truck bed stacked with sugar beets from Northern Colorado, ca. 1915 (courtesy Denver Public Library) All the Front Range needed was water. That’s where Benjamin Eaton had come in. As a massive landowner, he served as one of Greeley’s first officers of the utopian Greeley colony. Eventually, though, the utopian vision was thrown out the window and dollar signs began appearing in the eyes of the capitalists. The American Sugar Refining Company headed by robber baron H.O. Havemeyer had incorporated in 1891. Local growers of the utopian proclivity began to accept the capitalist emergence. So says the Jan 15, 1903 New York Times: “It is believed in Colorado that the American Sugar Refining Company has acquired such a large interest in the beet sugar business, either directly or indirectly, that it controls it.” By 1903, the capitalists had thoroughly gained their ground, and thus the vast amount of money necessary to build the factories flowed in. The factory in Longmont was designed and built by the Kilby Manufacturing Company of Cleveland, Ohio. The bricks for it were provided by contractors Edward Seerie and Frank Hill of Hill & Seerie — who also provided the bricks for Denver’s Sough High School. Longmont Sugar cost one million dollars to construct — an astronomical sum for any project in the early 1900s.
Only two years after construction, the newly formed Great Western Sugar Company had taken over the Longmont factory. In a few years time, the company had retained control of 15 factories along the Front Range. By 1920, Sugar was Colorado’s mainstay — the value of its harvest had multiplied to 20 times its 1900 level. Please continue following Bearings, or subscribe to its RSS in order to continue following the incredible story of sugar in Colorado. Find parts two and three here (part 2) and here (part 3).
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