Time Machine: From Conover to Minneapolis

MINNEAPOLIS - Forbes lists Cargill, Inc., of Minnesota as the largest private company in the United States. It was valued at $134.9 billion in October and employed 143,000.

The company will mark its 150th anniversary this year.

The number of Cargill facilities in Iowa rivals that of any other state, possibly because William W. Cargill began his company in the small village of Conover in Winneshiek County.

In the summer of 1865, Will Cargill disembarked from a McGregor & Western railroad passenger car onto the station platform at Conover. He wanted to buy a farm in northeast Iowa to grow wheat.

Conover, the end of the line for the railroad, was a lively frontier town where speculators from the east had driven land prices beyond Cargill's means. He found work in a grain storage flathouse, a predecessor to elevators. Eventually Cargill became a partner in the grain facility and then the sole owner.

When the Milwaukee line bought the McGregor & Western in 1867, new lines were opened up for Cargill's business. He built another grain storage shed in Ridgeway followed by one in Cresco.

Will married in 1868 and moved with his bride, Ellen Stowell, to his new company headquarters in Austin, Minn. In three years he had acquired five northeast Iowa grain facilities and had added branches in northwest Minnesota, the Dakotas and Wisconsin.

The business moved headquarters to Albert Lea, Minn., in 1870, then to La Crosse, Wis., in 1875, each time in response to railroad expansion. Will built his family's mansion in La Crosse across the street from the home of Duncan MacMillan. The MacMillans ran another grain dynasty, and in 1895 Will's daughter, Edna, married John H. MacMillan, joining the two families. The company headquarters was moved to Minneapolis in 1944.

The Cargill Elevator Company ran an extensive line of elevators throughout the wheat region in 1900. Anticipating a shortage in wheat production, the company closed 70 of its elevators north of the Litchfield line in Illinois, but retained all its elevator employees at a cost of nearly $50,000.

Cargill's impact on Cedar Rapids began with the purchase of Iowa Milling Company in 1942. The grain milling plant at 411 Sixth Street NE caught fire in October 1944. Lawrence Hoskins, manager of the plant, said that there were no beans or oil in the mill or in the huge concrete storage tanks. Old stock was gone and the new bean crop had not yet come in, but the facility was gutted. The damage was covered by insurance. Customers were served by other plants until it was rebuilt.

Cargill brought several of its major facilities to Cedar Rapids in 1945: a vegetable oil processing plant, a Cargill-Nutrena feed mill and a grain merchandising office.

Another Cedar Rapids Cargill facility caught fire in April 1951. Motorists driving from Iowa City reported seeing the flash from the explosion at the processing plant at 850 Tenth Street SW as they headed north at about 1 a.m. The company office building was lost within a half-hour after the blaze started, but firefighters brought the flames under control within an hour. The feed and soybean processing plant was built by Honeymead Products Co. in 1937 and purchased by Cargill in 1945 at an estimated cost of $2.5 million. The fire-damaged plant was back in operation in October.

In addition to the plants in Cedar Rapids, Cargill had soybean processing facilities in Washington, Spencer, Fort Dodge, Springfield and Chicago, Ill., Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Conrad, Mont., and San Francisco.

By its centennial in 1965, Cargill was flourishing with 17 facilities in Iowa among its offices and plants in 33 states and 25 foreign countries. Conover, however, was a ghost town with only an abandoned depot by a single railroad track. The railroads had moved on and Cargill with them.

Cargill entered the corn wet milling industry with the purchase of the Corn Starch and Syrup Co.in 1967 for $10 million, the largest purchase in the company's history. The plant expanded quickly, covering 20 acres between the Cedar River, Otis Road and 16th Street SE by 1996.

By 1990, the company had three processing plants and an analytical laboratory in Cedar Rapids, employing 320 with a payroll of $9 million. Even though Cedar Rapids is Cargill's oldest location for corn and soybean processing, the plants were kept up to date. The corn processing facility was given a $9 million upgrade in 1990.

Silliker Laboratories of Iowa acquired Cargill Analytical Services testing lab in 1996.

Cargill's largest operation in Cedar Rapids is the corn wet milling plant on 16th Street SE. It also has a soybean processing plant on 12th Avenue SW and a soybean crushing plant on C Avenue NE that got a $20 million upgrade in 2012.

William Cargill died in 1909 at the age of 64. His company was run by his descendants until 1960 when John MacMillan Jr. died. Erwin Kelm became company president.

Starting with a simple grain storage unit in Iowa, Cargill Inc. has become a world leader in supplying food, agriculture, financial and industrial products.

The giant company still is family owned.