Worland Sugar Factory

The panel's sugar tramps worked the factory; the fields were another workforce. Volga German families came to Worland in 1915 and 1916 with the industry, and as that labor thinned, company agents recruited betabeleros, beet workers, from Mexico and Texas, preferring families because children could work the rows too. Thinning, hoeing and topping were stoop labor, and pay fell further in the Depression, when workers were easy to find. Mexican braceros worked the beets during the Second World War, and after 1963 the Mexican government barred its citizens from working in Wyoming.

What the plaque says

Worland Sugar Factory The Hanover Canal System, an irrigation project funded by J. W. Pulliam and his family, was completed in the Big Horn Basin in 1905, bringing settlers to Worland. Soon after the close of the project, which included the Big Horn Canal, Pulliam planted 600 acres of sugar beets and grain as a pilot project. His venture marked the first time sugar beets were planted in the Big Horn Basin. By 1909, growers in the area were under contract to cultivate sugar beets, which were then sent by rail to Billings, Montana. The Wyoming Sugar Company of Ogden, Utah, announced its plan to construct a beet sugar factory in Worland in 1916. 150 men finished the $1 million factory in just one year. Despite concerns about delays in beet shipments caused by slow railroad construction and a shortage of cars, the factory was completed on schedule. The Wyoming Sugar Company's president, J. M. Eccles, opened its doors on October 17, 1917. The first day of operations the factory sliced 260 tons of beets. Workers lived in row houses built by the company. Known as "sugar tramps," they were mostly young Mormons, along with families from Japan, Russia, Germany and Mexico. Holly Sugar Corporation acquired the Worland factory in 1925. By 1939, the beet receiving station was equipped to handle more than 70,000 tons of beets, making it the largest in the world at the time. In the early years, sugar beets were topped by hand, but by the 1950s and 1960s machine harvesting took over in the beet fields. When Holly Sugar Corporation announced in 2001 that the factory would close its doors, local growers, landowners, and business people in the Big Horn Basin and Fremont County formed a cooperative to purchase the factory. Under management by the newly formed cooperative, the factory was renamed the Wyoming Sugar Company in 2002.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hot Springs State Park — 27 mi
  Wyoming's first state park: a thousand feet of banded travertine along the Bighorn, a 1916 swinging bridge, and a small bison herd on the hill.

More markers nearby

• C.H. "Dad" Worland — steps away
• Worland: Original Town Site — steps away
• Bridger Trail - Bighorn River Crossing — 19 mi
• Hot Springs State Park — 27 mi