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Nwmo | The meat packing plants have been gone for quite some time in St. Joe but I have heard several stories from people who used to work in them.
I had a highschool teacher who used to paint in the DugDale packing house. He said the owner was a big time Safari big game hunter type, and every once in a while the bolt guns or stun guns wouldn't completely knock the cattle out. When this happened they would have a cow running wild through the packing house. The owner would clear everybody out and hunt it with a rifle.
The Saint Joe Stock yard at one time was the 4th largest in the country, they had a really nice Stock yard exchange building that is actually still there but it is very bad disrepair. A couple of local business owners bought it several years ago with intentions of fixing it up and making a museum out of it but so far not much has happened.
My Great grandfather used to raise hogs and he started printing a booklet of various hog prices and other information important to people raising or selling hogs and grew that business into a printing business that is still in operation today down on 4th in Saint Joseph. The building is actually an old old packing house. They have a couple of rooms in the back with old hemp string hanging from the ceiling and was still there when I was a kid, Those two rooms were the meat hanging rooms.
I think the Meatpacking industry is very interesting, the numbers that places like Saint Joseph or KC or Chicago were moving are just astounding. At the Turn of the century I think they say St Joe was moving a million hogs a year and close to that in Cattle and Sheep
Devin
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Old Kansas City Stockyards Questions
