Holly Sugar: 75th Anniversary

Story provided by The Torrington Telegram

In the beginning...

On Sunday, October 26, 1926, the first beets of the season entered the flames to be made into sugar.

Men of vision in the community during the early 1900s knew the need for community growth, jobs for its citizens and an expanded economic base. A sugar factory in an area of high sugarbeet production would improve conditions tremendously.

Men of wealth and power could, in this era, move whole factories like figures on a chessboard. And thus a factory was moved to Torrington.

Born of vision and grown in early adversity the chronological history of Sugar Company unfolds.

Sugarbeets were first introduced to this area in the early 1900s and shipped to various points for refinement.

In January of 1919, an announcement was made that Goshen County farmers produced a higher average tonnage per acre than any other point in the North Platte Valley, between Guernsey, Wyo., and North Platte, Neb.

Holly Sugar in its early days.  Photo Courtesy of Holly Sugar.

Torrington-area farmers averaged 17.5 tons per acre while the average of the whole valley was 11.79 tons per acre.

At that time there were three factories in the North Platte Valley to handle the sugarbeet crop. Lingle, Wyo., the only other growing point in the county, was said to have produced 11.4 tons of beets per acre during 1919.

Expansion of the sugarbeet industry in the valley was said to be the policy of one established company. The number of factories would be increased.

By 1920, the question being asked most frequently was, "What stands between Torrington and a sugar factory?" Negotiations were quietly going on behind the scenes of an ever-expanding sugarbeet growth in this area. A number of Torrington citizens, those whose power it was to build plants and factories for the manufacture of sugar, were quietly meeting to discuss the situation. 

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