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| Holly Sugar Factory, Huntington Beach, 1910s. |
Orange County had five large sugar factories, much of its landscape was covered in sugar beet fields, and whole towns sprang up to support the table sugar industry. The county's production supplied a significant share of the nation’s sugar needs. And thousands of cattle fed on the industry’s castoffs: beet pulp and greens.
During Orange County’s first decade (1889-1899), local farmers already saw the potential of sugar beets. But the beets had to be shipped to facilities in Chino or other places to be processed into refined table sugar. Also, the shipping and handling of the beets required a great deal of manual labor. So the ramping up of the local sugar business didn't happen overnight.
In 1894 Anaheim nurseryman Timothy Carroll invented a contraption he called the “beet dump,” which allowed for the easy unloading of sugar beets from wagons to rail cars. It was so efficient that even Carroll’s young son could accomplish in a couple hours the same work that previously required a couple days of labor from a team of grown men. Although it took ten years to patent, the beet dump revolutionized the industry by dramatically decreasing the need for manual labor.
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| Beet dump, Los Alamitos, late 1910s. |
Orange County’s first sugar plant opened on the old Los Alamitos Rancho in 1897, and the Bixby Land Co. created the town of Los Alamitos to support the factory. The plant’s owner, Montana copper magnate William Clark, also purchased 8,139 acres and rented an additional 20 square miles, for the growing of sugar beets. The factory was located on the north end of what's now Reagan St., south of Cerritos Ave. By 1901, Orange County was the nation’s leading grower of sugar beets. In 1911 alone, the Los Alamitos plant processed 180 million pounds of them.
The Los Alamitos operation was joined in 1909 by the Southern California Sugar Co. factory in Santa Ana, located on Main St., just south of Warner Ave. But there was dissention among the factory’s numerous owners, and soon several of the most prominent investors – James Irvine, James McFadden and A. J. Crookshank – left the fold to start their own Santa Ana Cooperative Sugar Co. factory near today’s 55 Freeway and Embassy Suites hotel.
The factory was designed and built for them by the Dyer Company, then renown as the industrial pioneers who first succeeded in refining beet sugar on a commercial scale. The road adjacent to the Santa Ana Cooperative plant still bears the name Dyer. The factory itself was an enormous complex with a daily capacity of 1,200 beets – the largest in the county. And with two sugar factories in the area, the small population of South Santa Ana would grow dramatically.
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| Downtown Los Alamitos, circa 1920, with sugar factory in background. |
In 1911, the Anaheim Sugar Company’s plant began operation on Patt St. at Commercial St., in what’s now called the La Fábrica neighborhood. The plant was purchased and closed by the Holly Sugar Co. in 1923 but was not torn down until 2005.
As sugar beets grew well in damp, alkali soil, it was a natural for the Holly Sugar Co. to build a plant north of Downtown Huntington Beach in 1911. It was located on the northwest corner of Main St. and Garfield Ave. Oil – which was far more profitable than sugar – was found on the property in 1921, and the plant closed to make way for oil operations.
In 1912, Orange County produced 100,138,700 pounds of refined sugar and by World War I it provided about a fourth of the nation’s supply.
The Southern California Sugar Co. and the Santa Ana Cooperative Sugar Co. sold their factories to the Holly Sugar Co. in 1917. A few years later, Holly closed the Southern California plant to use as a storage facility for beet pulp and sugar from the larger factory. Today, only the factory’s office building still stands, at 2406 S. Main.
In the early 1920s, the region’s sugar beets were badly damaged by a nematode infestation, making the sugar business less profitable. The Los Alamitos factory closed after the 1925 season and beets were redirected to the Holly plant on Dyer Rd. By 1926, it was the only sugar factory left in the county. Longtime locals remember the musty, chemically, burnt-sugar smell that emanated from the plant. Similarities to Candyland were few.
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| Holly Sugar Factory, South Santa Ana, circa 1965. |
In 1935, young Howard Hughes set a world speed record in an experimental plane over Santa Ana and then crash landed in a sugar beet field. It could have been seen as an omen: Sugar production had crashed, but industries like aerospace and technology would soon play a central role in our economy.
The last of Orange County’s sugar beets were harvested in 1973. Although the factory was briefly retooled to process cane sugar, it closed in 1982 and, despite historical preservationists' best efforts, was torn down in 1983.
Lamenting the building’s demolition, historian Jim Sleeper recounted the factory’s role as “a major contributor to Orange County's economy as an employer, manufacturer, and purchaser of the county's second most important field crop – sugar beets."
Today's "then and now" images show the part of the Santa Ana Civic Center I like to call "The Salt Flat of the Flags." The concept illustration was done in 1970, shortly after the completion of the Orange County Central Justice Center. I took the "after" photo a couple years ago. Note the State Building which now looms over this mostly featureless plaza. 
