Re: [CBQ] Re: Rochelle Swift Plant

["STEVEN HOLDING sholding@sbcglobal.net [CBQ]" <CBQ@yahoogroups.com>]

Sanborn is the first place I look even though they often do not show or have gross errors.  The swift plant does not show on the maps you can get to on the Internet.

The Swift plant had an open house in the mid-60's and we took a family day and went to it.  It was of course shut down and cleaned up for the tour.  Up till 1966 when my parents would not let me go to the farm(in Mich) for the summers we would have a beef shipped to the local slaughter house and then go get it with our trailer.  Lay it in old bed sheets in the trailer and haul it to the local locker plant.  There the owner would cut and wrap it and put it in our locker so when we needed meat at home we would make a shopping trip and stop by the locker and pick it up.

After getting moved to Galesburg I worked part-time for the neighbor and every Thursday we would weight and sort out the fat hogs and load up 50-75 and take to Wilson Packing in Monmouth.  I also would raise and haul a couple in every year then take the check to the bank and walk over and pay my taxes at the courthouse.  There was a local plant in both Galesburg and Abingdon which would kill, cut and wrap your hog or beef. While the neighbor also raised beef but I never got to go on a trip to Joslin(on the Pea Vine north of the Quad Cities) to the IBP plant.

We will talk more of this at my Clinic at the Rock Island meet in Sept. 

Steve in SC

On Sunday, August 31, 2014 10:39 AM, "rgortowski@aol.com [CBQ]" <CBQ@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

Leo,

 

See my just posted email on this.  I'll bring the Rochelle development plan book to Rock Island and we can look at it together in a few weeks.

 

Rich

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Leo qutlx1@aol.com [CBQ] <CBQ@yahoogroups.com>
To: CBQ <CBQ@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sun, Aug 31, 2014 9:17 am
Subject: Re: [CBQ] Re: Rochelle Swift Plant

 

Rich and Doug,

While not definitive this may help.

My book of Aurora Div track charts has a page dated 2-15-60 for Rochelle. On it there is no Ice track or spur into Swift. In fact the further most tracks on the east end of town are the pass and storage. Standard Oil is the farthest eastward industry at that time. 

In Spoors volume on pg 52/53 there is a picture of cars on the Ice trk and the switch into Swift is

Clearly shown.

Having switched the plant many times I would have sworn it was much older than 1962.

Leo Phillipp

Sent from my iPad

On Aug 30, 2014, at 10:48 PM, "rgortowski@aol.com [CBQ]" <CBQ@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

Doug,

 

What I'm trying to determine is the location of the current Rochelle Foods plant the "new Swift plant" that the 1962 article talks about.  If so, where was the existing plant that people say was the 1948 Swift plant?  I have a  circa1954 picture of the Standard Oil bulk fuel facility, and the meat plant is clearly not in this picture, so I believe the existing plant - just east of the bulk oil facility - is the "new" plant the Sycamore True Republican is reporting on in 1962.  That would leave the question of where the existing plant was located in 1948.

 

Rich G.

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: 'Douglas Harding' doug.harding@iowacentralrr.org [CBQ] <CBQ@yahoogroups.com>
To: CBQ <CBQ@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sat, Aug 30, 2014 9:37 pm
Subject: [CBQ] Re: Rochelle Swift Plant

 

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochelle,_Illinois (and other similar sites) Rochelle became a meat packing center with the Swift plant after WWII. Which would coincide with the 1948 date we have discussed before. Hormel purchased the plant in 1993 and did some expansion after that.

 

Somewhere I one time came across something that indicated that Rochelle Foods LLS built the plant about 1933. But I cannot confirm. Swift acquired the plant, apparently after the war. I have a reference that says Rochelle Foods had an auction, but I have no date for the sale. More than one plant did not survive the depression. And some sat empty for a while before being picked up by another company.

 

Doug Harding

www.iowacentralrr.org

 

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Posted by: STEVEN HOLDING <sholding@sbcglobal.net>

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