Sugar Industry
The production of beet sugar contributed substantially to Utah's economy for almost one hundred years.
As part of Brigham Young’s efforts to help the Utah Territory be self-sufficient, leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints looked at industries that would help Utah avoid dependence on the East.
In 1849 Governor Brigham Young sent Apostle John Taylor on a mission to France to investigate industries that could be successfully established in the New Mountain Empire. There he met Phillip DeLamare, a man of exceptional talents and substantial means, who had a knowledge of the sugar industry. In Orras, France, they carefully examined the sugar beet industry (open kettle method), and convinced of its possibilities, raised funds in England, and purchased equipment in Liverpool, England.[1]
The early 1850s found Latter-day Saint settlers growing sugar beets and the Sugar Industry began.
Settlers scattered across the West had depended on sugar from the East, often at a high price. In the early days of settlement, three pounds of sugar went for $2 - a significant amount of money in pioneer terms.
One of the early obstacles of processing beet sugar was the chemical problems of converting beets grown in the alkaline soil of Utah into granulated sugar. Another challenge was the short growing season in much of the state.
In the 1850s, the experimental sugar beet factory in southeast Salt Lake, still known as Sugar House, produced a syrup that was not considered palatable. The effort to produce sugar was plagued by crop failures in 1855 and 1856. Much later, in the 1880s, the effort was revitalized. The federal government offered 2-cents-per-pound bounty for all beet sugar produced anywhere in the country. About a million pounds of sugar were produced that 1891 fall season.
- “Particularly active in keeping interest in the industry alive was Arthur Stayner, a horticulturist from England, who used his energies and property in experiments with sugar cane, sorghum cane, and sugar beets. In 1887 Stayner received a $5,000 bounty from the legislature for the first 7,000 pounds of marketable sugar produced in Utah. Stayner visited other early experimental sugar-producing plants, and with passionate earnestness he solicited the support of the LDS Church and business leaders in the formation of a company to finance further investigations. Incorporated in 1889, the Utah Sugar Company, which was largely financed by the LDS Church, sponsored studies, analyses, and investigations leading to the completion in 1891 of a $400,000 beet sugar factory at Lehi. Constructed by E.H. Dyer, this 350-ton capacity plant was the first beet sugar factory in the United States built with American machinery. . . . With the state's well-developed irrigation agriculture, and the improved practices developed by scientists at the Utah State Agricultural Experiment Station at Logan, beet growing soon became attractive and profitable. After the Lehi plant was confirmed as a technical and financial success in 1897, many new factories were established in the West, including seventeen in Utah.“[2]
David Eccles joined with Charles W. Nibley and others to build factories in Ogden (1898), Logan (1901), and Lewiston (1905). These and other factories outside the state were combined in 1915 as the Amalgamated Sugar Company. The Church of Jesus Christ and its associates built a factory in Garland, Utah, in 1903, as well as others in Idaho to form the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company in 1907. Other factories were built either by Utah-Idaho and/or local interests: in Elsinore (1911), Payson (1913), Layton (1915), West Jordan (1916), Brigham City (1916), Moroni (1917), Delta (1917), Mapleton (1918), Gunnison (1918), and Honeyville (1920).
World Wars I and II declined the industry, as did the invasion of the beet leafhopper (Eutettix tenellus, or white fly) in the 1920s that caused a "blight," or "curly top," that devastated crops. A few of the factories were disassembled and moved out of state. Further, cane sugar took less labor to produce and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company struggled to compete.
During the mid-1900s, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began selling its interests in the sugar companies.[3]
- “By the 1980s there were no beet sugar factories in Utah. The Utah-Idaho Sugar Company had abandoned the production of sugar, and the Amalgamated Sugar Company, with headquarters in Ogden, had only four plants--three in Idaho (at Rupert, Twin Falls, Nampa), and one in Oregon (at Nyssa). Despite this reduction in plants, in 1990 Amalgamated was the second largest producer of beet sugar in the United States, with sales grossing $400 million per year.”[4]
Utah farmers declined to ship their sugar beets out of state due to the expense, and most switched to other crops. Utah fell off the sugar-producing map.
“The fact that Utah enjoyed nearly a century of sweet success is a testament to the stubborn self-sufficiency of Utah’s farmers.”[5]
