Better Beet Seed.
         Better Revenue.

By: Staff Writer, The Coloradoan 

Windsor has had a very “sweet” past thanks to the Great Western Sugar Company.

The first sugar was made at the Windsor Great Western Sugar Company’s factory on Friday, Nov. 6, 1903. The factory was one of three area factories that had been built that same year and was the first to produce sugar.

Sugar beet farming was not new to the Windsor area. Raising sugar beets on a smaller scale began in 1900. Sugar factories had been built in Greeley and Eaton in 1901. Beets were shipped by rail for processing. The farmland around Windsor proved to be a good area for the sugar beet industry.

The factory was built to process 600 tons of beets per day but usually exceeded that in the slicing of the beets per day. All that sugar brought prosperity to the community.
Windsor, thanks to the sugar beet industry, also saw the biggest population boom it had experienced up to that time. In 1900 the census was only 390 people and by 1910 it had grown to more that 1,000 people.

Along with the people, the town saw an increase in housing and businesses. Housing was an issue. In 1907, a sugar factory hotel was constructed and in 1914, the Great Western Sugar Company built 14 homes for the employees. Permanent employees of the factory later purchased these homes.

Besides providing jobs for 45 full-time employees as well as many seasonal workers, the GWSC also helped the community by improving the roads. Improvements were made to bridges. On Nov. 14, 1903 a small bridge collapsed under the weight of the wagon and a four-horse team, spilling beets into a ditch.
In the early years, prior to WWI, beet seed was imported from Germany. When the war threatened to cut off the supply of seed, the land around Windsor was adapted to grow seed.

For more than 60 years the sugar beet industry was the major economic contributor to our area. Over $12 million was paid to the employees of the GWSC. By 1959, 95 percent of the farmers in the Windsor area raised sugar beets.

But, the end of the sugar beet industry was near.

If was a very sad day for Windsor when at the end of the 1966 beet campaign the factory was closed. Some employees went to the Eaton, Brighton, and Longmont factories that remained open until 1977. That same year the Johnstown monosodium glutamate production facility closed in Johnstown.

After returning to Windsor for his duty with in the military service, Charlie Sheid worked at the factory for the last year it operated.

He farmed in the Windsor area until about 1993. He was actively involved in the Mountain States Beet Growers Association, representing the beet growers.

The sugar beet industry was unique in that the farmers only had one producer of sugar to sell the sugar beets to. Beet prices were negotiated for the farmers to get the best price for the beets.

Sheid says that the beet industry was the lifeblood of Windsor for many years. The German Russians came here specifically to work in the sugar beet industry. Sheid remembers referring to the workers at the factory as the “Sugar Bums.”

Some believe that the closing of the sugar factory made land and water available for the new Eastman Kodak plant and considered it a mixed blessing.

Great Western Sugar Company’s main building was torn down April 4, 1977. There seems to be only speculation and hearsay as to why the smoke stack remains. But the Great Western Sugar Company’s smoke stack still remains and is the namesake for Chimney Park located just south of the old factory.

As late as the 1980s, the four sugar silos still held five-pound sacks of sugar.
Information for this story found in the Poudre Valley, Windsor Beacon, A Walk Through Windsor by Mary Alice Lindblad, Highlights in the History of Windsor by Roy Ray.