The Longmont Sugar Refinery, once one of the Great Western Sugar Company’s largest factories — shuttered in 1978 (photo copyright Jon Haeber).

Editor’s Note: Yes readers! Once again, I’m bringing you a special series. This one’s about the sugar industry in Eastern Colorado. There are three parts. This is part one. Stay tuned for parts two and three. Enjoy!

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 Beets

There 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.

Construction of the Longmont Sugar Refinery, ca. 1910 (courtesy Denver Public Library)

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. Stay tuned for parts two and three.

The Bearings Blog ethos encompasses a simple ideology: The love of all things geographic, especially things that are human-inspired and influenced. The monuments and bones of the past are a vital component of recognizing our history, blunders, ingenuity, and culture. Nowhere is this more apparent in the Bay Area, which was perhaps THE most capitalistic of urban conglomerations in our not-too-distant past. I am honored to live here, not only because of its diversity of sites to find and photograph, but also because of the artistic and technological climate it fosters.

In the most simple historical distillation, San Francisco is a microcosm of our country. It was in the right place during the industrial revolution to support a military buildup unseen in history (and which remains decaying in the wake), ripe for academics, kooks (like me), and history buffs (to interpret to a pulp). Now, as a fusion of geography, politics, history, post-industrial technology, and artistic, bohemian heritage I find this place the perfect hotbed for great ideas and great art.

Bearings has been fortunate to know some savants of this landscape, and this entry is meant to provide you with a general, albeit condensed, overview of my favorite local landscape photographers and interpreters.

Steve Walsh

Photo copyright Steve Walsh

Steve is a Berkeley-based photographer, who has focused primarily on moonlit landscapes. He’s also incredibly adept at light painting, a somewhat improvised, but calculated way of illuminating a frame. Another thing, which gives Steve’s work a special place in the heart of Bearings’ editor, is his love of concrete blocks (mosaic above). His personal love of these little-noticed aspects of landscape makes him top-rate in our book (blog)!

Joe Reifer

Photo copyright Joe Reifer

Berkeley is home to many incredible photographers. Mr. Joe Reifer is known for his well-received blog, Words, in which he discusses the latest news on photography, web 2.0, art, and music. He’s also a regular user of alternative film techniques, including pinhole, holga, modded, black and white, and medium/large format work.

Troy Paiva

Photo copyright Troy Paiva

He’s often referred to as “that Lost America” guy — and for good reason. His book, Lost America, has become somewhat of a cult classic, especially amongst urban landscape aficionados. Troy’s work pops — really pops — and he often (but not always) utilizes colored gels to add a little pizazz to his shots. One need only browse any night photography group on Flickr to get a sense of how Troy’s style has influenced an entire generation of night photographers.

Todd Lappin

Photo copyright Todd Lappin

What started as an urban camouflage experiment turned into a online phenomenon. Telstar Logistics was originally a method of getting into all of those really nifty spots that we landscape historians love to see but often get arrested for visiting. The corporate motto of Telstar Logistics is “Land, Air, Sea, Space.” Bearings loves to blog about this kind of schtuff; in fact, our opiate of choice are these elements of the environment — the masses can have their “religion,” we’ll just stick with our daily RSS of Telstar’s employee news weblog.

Scott Haefner

Photo copyright Scott Haefner

Scott Haefner is a kite aerial photographer — and if there’s anything that urban landscape historians love, it has to be bird’s eye views of our favorite built environments. We swoon over these things. Recently, however, Scott has focused much of his work on the ground, which is equally as intriguing. With an incredible eye for light and composition, Scott has been able to convey not only the stories, but also the art inherent in the built environment.

Andy Frazer

Photo copyright Andy Frazer

Andy is, first and foremost, an adept night photographer, but he also follows the entire world of night photography and keeps his barometer attuned to the latest and greatest photographic artists of our time through his Night Photography Blog.

Basim Jaber

Photo copyright Basim Jaber

What would the Bay Area be without the South Bay — this oft-overlooked region of our unique landscape demands its own entry in Bearings. Suffice to say, Basim Jaber has been able to capture the ghostly artifacts of South Bay history. He has an avid devotion to researching the history behind the locations he photographs. His study of Almaden Air Force Station and his survey of inundated settlements in the South Bay are unparalleled. Please keep an eye out in future Bearings entries for more on the flooded towns and Basim’s documentation of these places as the water dips to record levels at the lakes.

The interior of the Kahuku Marconi Wireless building remains very much like it was during its 1914 inauguration, except now — instead of high-power transformers, wireless transmission keys, and antennae apparatus — you have above-ground pool-like structures containing shrimp krill.

Editors Note: This is part 3 in a three-part series on Marconi Wireless and government takeover over vital communications networks during times of war. I highly suggest taking a look at Part I here and Part II here before continuing. I hope you enjoy the narrative! There will be more special series’ arriving in the future!

What came from the war was a vast network of powerful communication hubs. During the war, these hubs were under the control of governments like never before. Unique to the U.S., when compared with other allies, was its insistence on holding on to influence over these radio holdings. Wireless had gone from a “mere adjunct to visual signaling” to a vital factor upon which armies, navies, and air forces had relied (Baker 177).

And government reliance had come at a cost so long as Marconi retained control of the patents. As General Electric was about to ship off a huge order of strategically important high-frequency alternators to British Marconi, Admiral Bullard and Captain Hooper, at the behest of President Wilson, stepped in and offered a lucrative government contract to GE. In exchange, GE would purchase American Marconi outright. In October 1919, the sale was completed and spawned the Radio Corporation of America (Harbord 60).

Guided into being by the President’s top Navy advisors, RCA provided integral services to the U.S. military — free from foreign investments or patent disputes. It also provided another outlet that was yet to be realized, but would soon have an indelible effect on American perception and ideology. In 1926, the giants of GE, Westinghouse, and RCA took their boldest step of all: they joined forces to form NBC — the first major broadcasting network.

Government and Corporate Alphabet Soups Blend (1926-1943)
As a private enterprise, NBC had some rather undeniable statist roots — after all, its parent company was GE (who most recently filed the largest tax return in history). It took over nearly a decade after FCC assumed oversight over radio corporations before it begin investigating the network’s practices. By that time, NBC had split into its “red” and “blue” holdings. Congressional hearings in 1941 only led to a perceived slackening of the anti-trust rules against NBC.

If it weren’t for the Department of Justice, NBC would have likely retained its control of the Blue Network. As it turns out, in 1943, it was forced to divest from its Blue holdings (selling them to the entrepreneur behind Life Savers and former commerce underscretary, Edward J. Noble). Still, though the ties between Blue and Red remained. Noble took the networks he had acquired from NBC and formed ABC.

At the cusp of the television revolution, the Second World War had begun, but not before three corporations — ABC, NBC, and CBS had claimed the lion’s share of communications in the country. In these three networks the ties to government were undeniable. And at the outbreak of World War II, this would prove invaluable. From CBS, CEO William S. Paley served as a colonel in the psychological warfare branch in the Office of War Information; from NBC, came the stalwart ties from its past inception as a Navy-formed corporation; and at CBS, a former undersecretary of commerce and confidante of NBC at the helm.

Administration Building of the original Marconi Building (later RCA)

These three corporations began the new era of television with a new type of psychological control over ideas and thoughts — and one more more potent than even radio had been during Marconi’s time.

Editor’s Note: This is the final part of a three part entry on wireless radio from the Imperial Age to World War II. It was inspired by my visit to an abandoned radio station in Hawaii, but the station itself is an illustration of a much larger effort by government and corporations to form ties and to sow the seeds of the military-industrial complex.

Further Note: After the publication of this piece, it came to the attention of the writer: the newspaper that reported the opening of the wireless station at Kahuku (with much fanfare, suffice to say [quoted in part II]) was owned by conservative sugar magnate Claus Spreckels. Spreckels was widely regarded extremely conservative and colonial in his political proclivities, so the stance of the article carries its own eerie bow of recognition to the theories postulated within this series.

Please find Part I here and Part II here.

Further Research

Coe, Douglas. Marconi: Pioneer of Radio. New York: Julian Messner, Inc. 1943.

Baker, W.J. A History of the Marconi Company. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 1971.

Harbord, J.G. “The Commercial Uses of Radio.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Vol. 142, Supplement: Radio. Mar., 1929. pp. 57-63.

Headrick, Daniel R. The Invisible Weapon: Telecommunications and International Politics 1851-1945. New York: Oxford University Press. 1991.

Headrick, Daniel R. and Pascal Griset. “Submarine Telegraph Cables: Business and Politics, 1838-1939.” The Business History Review. Vol. 75, No. 3. 2001. pp. 543-578.

“Marconi Wireless is Formally Opened by Governor Pinkham.” Pacific Commercial Advertiser. 25 Sep. 1914. pp A1, A9

“Patents. Infringement. Use by Government.” Harvard Law Review. Vol. 29, No. 3. Jan. 1916. p. 339.

Reich, Leonard S. “Research, Patents, and the Struggle to Control Radio.” The Business History Review. Vol. 51, No. 2. 1977. pp. 208-235.