Slaton Bakery

Mrs. Baird's began in a Fort Worth kitchen. Ninnie Baird started selling her bread in 1908, when her husband's diabetes kept him from steady work, and by 1919 her sons ran a brick bakery that was enlarged nine times over the next decade. Wartime sugar and labor shortages pushed the company down to basic white and wheat bread and hamburger and hot dog buns. It bought a bakery in Lubbock in 1959 or 1960, when it sold one of every four loaves in Texas, and Grupo Bimbo acquired the family company in 1998.

What the plaque says

SLATON BAKERY IN 1923, BLUE RIBBON BAKERY AND CITY BAKERY, EACH OF WHICH HAD OPENED IN 1921, CONSOLIDATED. BY 1925, THIS ESTABLISHMENT WAS KNOWN AS SLATON BAKING COMPANY. IN 1943, THE WILSON FAMILY PURCHASED THE BUSINESS. THE WILSONS OVERCAME RATIONING DURING WORLD WAR II TO CONTINUE A THRIVING BUSINESS. SLATON BAKERY INTRODUCED SLICED HAMBURGER AND HOT DOG BUNS TO THE AREA, AND DISTRIBUTED MRS. BAIRD'S PRODUCTS WHILE CONTINUING TO PRODUCE PASTRIES MADE ON SITE. THE BAKERY LATER ADDED HOMEMADE FLOUR TORTILLAS TO THEIR MENU. IN 1982, THE BUSINESS MOVED TO ITS PRESENT LOCATION. TODAY, SLATON BAKERY IS A COMMUNITY INSTITUTION, AND CONTINUES AS ONE OF THE OLDEST STILL-OPERATING BAKERIES IN THE STATE OF TEXAS. (2009)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Slaton Harvey House — 0.5 mi
  A 1912 Santa Fe Harvey House in the railroad town of Slaton, restored as a museum, event hall and five-room inn overlooking a working BNSF yard.
• American Windmill Museum — 14 mi
  Lubbock's park of restored water-pumping windmills and early wind chargers, more than 70 of them turning outdoors and the rare ones under roof, with a megawatt-era turbine overhead.
• Buddy Holly Center — 15 mi
  The city's museum of Buddy Holly and West Texas music in a 1928 railway depot, with the house where the Crickets worked on That'll Be the Day moved next door.
• National Ranching Heritage Center — 17 mi
  A Texas Tech outdoor museum where ranch houses, barns, windmills and a depot from across the ranching country were moved one by one onto a single park beside the campus.

More markers nearby

• Slaton — steps away
• Slaton Volunteer Fire Department — steps away
• Mercy Hospital — 0.7 mi
• Ransom Canyon — 6.8 mi