История спального района Спокена: от шумных скотобоев до промышленного парка

Then and Now: Spokane’s stockyards By Jesse Tinsley [email protected] (509) 459-5378 Older Spokane residents vividly remember an acrid aroma of animal manure and other odors from the meatpacking plants and stockyards while driving Trent Avenue near Freya Street before the 1970s. With the Spokane Union Stockyards opening around 1915, that area became the center for the local meat industry through the 20th century. The stockyard businesses brought producers and market buyers together to buy and sell cattle, hogs and sheep that arrived by train and by truck. The business made money on yardage fees on each head of livestock. The Spokane Union Stockyards went bankrupt in the 1920s and became the Old Union Stockyard Company, with F.M. Rothrock at the helm. In 1928, original stockyards co-owner Walter D. Roberts started the short-lived Stockmen’s Union Stockyards nearby, but was bought out by Old Union in 1930. The largest processing plant was the Spokane Meat Company started in 1896 by E.H. Stanton and partners at 3300 East Trent. Stanton was bought out by Armour and Co. in 1917, which became one of Spokane’s largest businesses. E.H. Stanton would later invest in Washington Trust Company which is still managed by Stanton family heirs more than a century later. The neighborhood had several meatpackers, including Armour, Swift and Co. and Carstens along East Trent Avenue. The Spokesman-Review reported 112,000 cattle were sold there in 1934, up from 58,000 in 1933. In 1937, the big meatpackers spent approximately $10 million a year on animals at the stockyards. Armour was a key government food supplier that shipped 75 to 80 railroad cars to feed the troops during World War II. In the 1950s, the large-volume buying gave way to weekly auctions. Slowly, the meatpackers closed and the industry went to other cities. In the early 1960s, the stockyards became Stockland, a much smaller business. Longtime cattle buyer Jim Seabeck took over in 1964, then he sold it to Ted Kerst in 1981. Facing dwindling volume, Stockland shut down the Spokane location in 1999, but still operates livestock auctions from Davenport, Washington. The Armour plant closed in 1970 and was torn down in 1979. The location is marked by a surviving smoke stack standing in the middle of Chimney Rock Industrial Park.