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Thursday, May 21, 2015

1915 Southern California Beet Dump


The photo above is of a beet dump in Los Alamitos, California, taken circa 1915-1920. "A Timothy Carroll beet dump."

We learn more from the Wikipedia page describing Los Alamitos:

In the early 1900s, sugar beets were delivered to a factory by horse and wagon. Economics, combined with an insect infestation in 1921, caused sugar-beet crop to drop significantly and the eventual demise of the sugar beet industry in Los Alamitos. But the town that had sprung up continued to grow. On the lands south of the factory (and current Orangewood Avenue), Fred Bixby, son of John Bixby and future member of the Cowboy Hall of Fame, used the sugar beet lands as a finishing ranch to fatten cattle before sending them off to slaughter (he also managed Hellman's lands in present Seal Beach). Bixby, one of the more progressive ranchers of his time, allowed European immigrant, Mexican, and Japanese farmers to rent the land and grow crops.

Photo courtesy Orange County Archives.