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October 1937. "Sugar beet factory with trucks lined up waiting to be unloaded. East Grand Forks, Minnesota." Photo by Russell Lee for the FSA. View full size.
That is one impressive coal pile - they must have stockpiled it during the year to get ready for the fall sugar beet harvest. Great business for the railroad, even though it seems from this picture that trucks have the advantage on the inbound sugar beets.
This facility still exists, although in much altered form - it's owned by American Crystal Sugar.
That's really quite the black plume.
What were they doing - burning the sugar once they extracted it from the beets?
Belching smokestacks, I mean. When I was growing up (Massachusetts in the 1960s), we had lots of factories in town, and thick black smoke was common.
Now, it seems shocking to see such visible pollution.
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