SUGAR BEET PLANT

The Minnesota Beet Sugar Manufacturing Company was incorporated on May 10, 1897. In 1898 it took over the 36-acre site of the Minneapolis Esterly Harvester Company and changed its name to the Minnesota Sugar Company. It was the first sugar beet plant to be built in the upper Midwest, and employed 450 men in 1899. The plant was built by Dyer and Kilby, and the first sugar was refined in 1898. It could process 350 tons of sugar beets per day. The company persisted in dumping its refuse in Minnehaha Creek, but nobody could come up with the money for a sewer. The site’s location was generally south of West 32nd Street, north of Highway 7, west of Gorham, Republic, and Louisiana Avenues, and east of Louisiana. 

Photo taken before the tornado of 1904

The plant was heavily damaged by the tornado of August 28, 1904, and destroyed by fire in 1905. It was replaced by a site in Chaska in 1906, which was acquired by the American Crystal Sugar Company in 1925. Republic Creosote took over the St. Louis Park site in 1917.

From the American Crystal Sugar Company:

The St. Louis Park Sugar Processing Plant was constructed in 1898 during a period which might appropriately be called a "heyday" in terms of the number of plants which were constructed. In fact, between 1897 and 1900, twenty-nine sugarbeet plants were built in the United States reflecting perhaps the largest period of growth ever known in the industry. Among those plants was the first to be constructed in the Upper Midwest - St. Louis Park, Minnesota. Built by Dyer and Kilby for the now defunct Minnesota Sugar Company, the plant had the capacity to process 350 tons of beets per day which represented an average capacity for plants constructed during that era.

Records show that the St. Louis Park Plant produced sugar from beets from 1898 until 1904. It then succumbed to a fiery death in 1905. Records also indicate that the St Louis Park Plant never proved to be a successful operation. It was replaced in 1906 by a plant constructed at Chaska, 20 miles southwest of Minneapolis. The Chaska Plant was owned by the Carver County Sugar Company until 1925 when it was acquired by American Crystal Sugar Company, now headquartered at Moorhead. Although it no longer produces sugar, the 600 ton-per-day plant is still used as a sugar distribution center. Equipment for the Chaska Plant came from a defunct sugar mill at East Tawas, Michigan, not from St. Louis Park as some people speculate.

Following the fire which consumed the St Louis Park Plant, all workable equipment was purchased and moved to Visalia, California where a new plant was constructed in 1906. In 1919, the St. Louis Park equipment was again relocated - this time to Hooper, Utah. There it went "on line" with other equipment designed and produced in France. In 1936, the Hooper Plant was dismantled, ending the saga of the ill-fated St. Louis Park sugar plant.

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This information comes from a variety of sources: newspapers, books, yearbooks, phone directories, interviews, etc. Given the varied sources, we cannot guarantee that all of this information is correct, and welcome any additions and corrections. Please contact us with your contributions and comments.