Once the driving force in the Loveland economy.
Reminders of Days Past!
The land east of the Colorado front range is essentially flat, resembling much of Kansas and Nebraska. The white silos of the Loveland sugar beet factory tower high above the trees and buildings in Loveland, CO. Tourists, on their way to Rocky Mountain National Park, along Highway 34 can easily see them. I suspect few of those travelers are thinking about old industrial buildings from a century ago.
The economy driving sugar beet factory was put into operation in 1901 and continued until 1985. If you hurry, you can still see them!
Most of the old buildings are in decay and suffering from neglect. A fence surrounds the entire area, so photography is generally restricted to under, over, and through fences and wires. Hopefully, I can get permission to go inside the fences someday.
Town of Lovelend Trucks come and go at the south gate of the facility, but I as told they do not own the plant.
The complex sits just south of the railway bed along Madison. Many eras of time separate the old plant from Home Depot, WalMart, and Sam’s Club, only a couple of blocks away.
The old office building harkens back to the “Three Little Pigs” children’s story. Time, like the big bad wolf, has been hard on the wooden structures, while the once proud brick structure is holding its own. The tree remnants give it a haunted house look.
Piles of junk metal await the recycle trucks outside this old structure. File cabinets, washers, dryers, ovens and water heaters add to the pile.
The “scenes” are hidden amongst a wide array of modern “clutter” like dumpsters, vehicles, cranes, and so forth. Considering the lack of access to the site, the challenge is to find angles to “crop away” the rest of the world, both in-camera and in post production.
Back in the day, 22 majestic, stated of the art, sugar beet factories were built in Colorado. An article I read said that only one remains in operation.
Over the 35+ year period we lived in Jackson Hole, many things we took for granted gradually disappeared. Sometimes subjects I liked simply decayed into oblivion. Some of them were sold and moved. Rule changes and closures wiped out a lot of opportunities, and some of my favorite “grungy” subjects were “cleaned up”. 30 years from now, this could be a new shopping mall or a launch station to take people to the moon.
Note: The photos on this page were all taken with a Sony A1 body and a Tamron 35-150mm lens. They were all hand held.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. and a
The Loveland Museum (.org)
I worked on this page early this morning, and thought I had it finished, but I didn’t hit the “publish” button. As luck would have it, I went to downtown Loveland to see the pastel artists in action. The event was just outside the Loveland Museum on 5th street, so I wandered into the museum to check it out. I bought a memebership to the museum over the phone a few days ago, so I wanted to see if live. As it turns out, the museum has a permanent section dedicated to the Great Western Sugar Company!
This is just one of several similar informational plaques in the Great Western section of the museum. All were very informative. You can see a few more plaques in the previous photo showing the scale replica of the original plant.
If you get a chance, visit the Loveland Museum. From what I saw, the main level is free to visit.