North Fork meat packing plant questions

[NW Mailing List]

Dr. Greer,

The other two were Wilson and Swift, which made for a curious 
concentration of packing plants in Northfork. A facing-point spur off of 
the eastbound main ran behind the station parallel to Elkhorn Creek. 
Across the spur from the station was Wilson, built as S&S, Schwarzchild 
and Sulzberger, next to the creek. Next door to Wilson was Armour, near 
the end of the spur. Across the spur from Armour, Flat Top Ice and Cold 
Storage was strategically located between the spur and the main line at 
the end of the station platform.

I ran across an early map of Northfork in Division archives that 
indicated cattle pens on the lot between S&S and Armour. I haven't 
looked up the owner(s), but apparently, product still on the hoof was 
first shipped in before widespread adoption of the Swift business model 
of shipping refrigerated carcasses. Swift built later nearby on a 
trailing-point spur off of and adjacent to the eastbound main just west 
of the North Fork Hollow Road crossing.

Later, anyway, each plant received one car of meat every Monday morning, 
plus the occasional load of sausage. LCL outbound shipments to 
distributors and retailers would have been easy, given the close 
proximity of the packing plants, the station and the ice house. 
Eventually, trucks would handle all outbound shipments.

Grant Carpenter

On 12/9/2017 2:37 PM, NW Mailing List wrote:
> The recent discussions on the operations on the North Fork branch have 
> been fascinating and particularly the sidebar about meat reefers. I've 
> been digging through print references, newspaper articles, and online 
> searches to attempt to learn more about the meat industries there.  
> I've found reference to the presence of 3 different meat packing 
> plants in North Fork, but so far I've only been able to learn the name 
> of one of them (Armour).  Can anyone here tell me the names of the 
> other 2?
>
> Also, I would like to know how many carloads they typically might have 
> received each week.
>
> Sincere Thanks!
> Brent
>
> ________________________________
> Dr. J. Brent Greer

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