Canneries Showcased

MUSEUM DETAILS HISTORY OF LOCAL INDUSTRY

Consider that can of Rotel in the pantry. Diced tomatoes. Where did it come from? Where were the tomatoes grown? Who packed it? How did it get on your shelf?

Back in the day, chances were it came from right here in Northwest Arkansas.

The Shiloh Museum of Ozark history in Springdale details the history of the local commercial canning industry in a photo exhibit, “Canned Gold,” which opened Tuesday and continues through Dec. 14.

The local canning industry got started in Northwest Arkansas after the arrival of the Frisco railroad in 1881, said Marie Demeroukas, archivist and librarian for the Shiloh Museum

“The railroad was a force - a huge economic force - in the area,” she said. “It allowed supplies to get in and to send the canned goods out.”

Tomatoes, green beans, poke, apples, peaches, blueberries and more were shipped from Northwest Arkansas. The area earned recognition for the fruit grown here from the 1880s to the 1920s.

The Springdale Canning Co.

started the industry when Judge Millard Berry, with other investors, opened the cannery in 1886. At its peak, the cannery processed 10,000 cans a day, according to an interpretive panel from the exhibit.

The plant stood just north of the current-day Springdale Police Department and just west of the railroad tracks on Huntsville Avenue, Demeroukas said. More recently, the structure housed an ice plant. Crews demolished the building a few years ago with the widening of the street.

“It was a huge business from the get-go,” Demeroukas said. “It was promoted by the railroad to help the railroad increase its freight business.”

Truman Stamps of Springdale recalled playing at the Cain Canning Co. when his mother worked there in the 1940s. A section of that building remains as part of the North Thompson Street warehouse facility of Allens Inc., Demeroukas said.

Stamps explained the industrial process used in the canning plant for the museum, she credited.

People in practically every community boasted of their own cannery, Demeroukas said, listing Tontitown, Alpena and Pettigrew as examples. The exhibit includes photos of the Barrett Canning Co. in Carroll County, Valley Canning Co. in Hindsville and Morsani Canning Co. in Tontitown.

“What’s apparent in these pictures is the pride they took in showing off their factory,” Demeroukas said. Most pictures include something representing each step of the canning process and labeled cans creatively stacked for the professional photographs.

“They were small businesses, but they shipped out thousands of cans,” Demeroukas said. “It may have been humble, but they thought it was grand.”

The canneries provided jobs for many in Northwest Arkansas, especially through the Great Depression and World War II. But the jobs were seasonal, according to the crops. And some plants spent the summer processing, then canning and labeling when the growing seasons ended, Demeroukas said.

Women usually did the peeling and earned their pay according to the number of buckets they could fill in the shift, Demeroukas continued. Some canneries operated with each woman wearing a tag on her shoulder, and when she filled a bucket, a man would take the bucket and punch a hole in her tag, giving her credit for each bucket filled.

Waneta Smith Redford worked for the Woolsey canning plant in the late 1930s to early 1940s, when she was about 18 or 19 years old, her daughter, Pam Redford, figured. A wagon load of tomatoes would be dumped in the scalder and come off some type of assembly line, which ran to the peelers. When Waneta finished a bucket load, she would send it off to the next step and yell, “Tomatoes!” Redford revealed, and they’d bring her another bucket full.

Demeroukas said each morning, cannery managers would blow a whistle at the plant to let those in the community know they were canning that day. Workers just showed up, and they stayed until it was done, she said.

Another picture shows a giant pile of green beans, waiting to be processed for the military in the 1940s. Alonzo Roberts worked after school and during summers at Springdale Canning. His job was to turn the beans with a big pitchfork - similar to aerating compost, Demeroukas said. The trucks would arrive and just dump the beans, but they were still warm from the fields and highly degradable.

After the product cooked - whether it be fruit, beans or greens - workers hoisted perforated baskets fi lled with hot cans into a cooling bath.

Ginger Greathouse Roces of Springdale recalled swimming in the baths at the Springdale Canning factory when the plant was closed on Sunday, Demeroukas related. Her father, James Greathouse, was plant manager.

Another picture shows the first entire train - 23 or 24 cars - fully filled with canned goods leaving Springdale, Demeroukas added. One railroad boxcar could carry 14 tons or 28,000 pounds when fully packed.

The fruit industry waned in the 1920s, but the canning continued, Demeroukas said. The smallest canneries went out of business with the Depression and drought. Also, food safety guidelines and labor costs increased. Middle-level producers left during World War II.

But the largest - like Steele Canning Co. in Lowell, Springdale Canning Co. and Allen Canning Co. - remained. From 1934 to 1944, 70 percent of the canned goods produced by Springdale Canning and Steele Canning - both owned by Joe M. Steele - went to feed the troops, reads the interpretive panel. Allen eventually owned Steele.

Today, the only commercial canning in Northwest Arkansas happens at Allens Inc., founded in 1926 in Siloam Springs, Demeroukas said. The company also owns the warehouse facility on North Thompson Street, with Popeye inherited from Steele Canning.

The museum exhibit includes 23 framed photos and a few artifacts of canning in Northwest Arkansas, Demeroukas said. Interpretive panels explain the process. The museum shares personal histories of those involved in the industry from - what else? - a can attached to string.

Research assistant April Griffith uncovered some beautiful original labels and discovered the labels told the stories about when and where the can was processed, Demeroukas said. An assortment of labels can be put together in a hands-on aspect of the exhibit.

Life, Pages 6 on 05/15/2013

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