Joe R. Blakely

Oregon Places

The Nestlé Condensary in Bandon

While it may have been an eyesore to most residents of Bandon, Oregon, to me it was a photographic opportunity. It was spring 2001 when I first noticed the weather-beaten building on the Bay of Bandon. On the east end, in large bold red letters, I could still see the words "MOORE MILL AND LUMBER CO. TRUCK SHOP." In the 1990s, Moore Lumber Company had judged the building's usefulness to be over and had deeded the structure to the Bay of Bandon. Now the building was crumbling, experiencing a long, slow death into the sea. The dilapidated structure had once been an economic hope for Bandon. On January 16, 1919, Nestlé and Anglo–Swiss Milk Company, the largest manufacturer of condensed milk in the world, had bought the new, almost-finished condensary.¹ Nestlé had a huge market for its condensed milk in Asia, and the company had decided that the Bandon plant — located strategically on the West Coast — would be the largest in the nation.

The short-lived Bandon enterprise began in the fall of 1917, when the Giebisch and Joplin Condensed Milk Company of Portland acquired enough land — most of it donated by the city of Bandon — to build a milk-condensing plant. The building — "a two story structure 106' × 240', with an additional detached power house of 40' × 60' — would be constructed on piles that would jut into the Bay of Bandon. Workers began driving the piles for the new condensary in January 1918, about the same time that Giebisch and Joplin was completing a milk-condensing factory in McMinnville. Both the Bandon and McMinnville plants were to be up and running by April 1918.²

Soon after the McMinnville plant was completed, however, Giebisch and Joplin ran into financial problems. The McMinnville Weekly Telephone-Register reported that the company owed $400,000 to creditors, including a mortgage on the property, a lien for a new addition, taxes, and wages. The largest debt was $68,000 to dairy farmers for milk. The company settled with all of its creditors for fifty cents on the dollar and was left with fifteen thousand cases of milk that was reportedly "not of standard quality."³ In the meantime, work continued on the Bandon plant, where "smoke stacks were being erected, new condensing machinery was being installed, [and] bids for painting [were] needed[;] the Bandon plant was proceeding towards completion by the spring of 1918."⁴

The building that housed the truck shop for the Moore Mill and Lumber Company in Bandon, Oregon — shown here shortly before it was dismantled in 2001 — was the home of the Nestlé Condensary from 1919 to 1925.

Courtesy of the author

In January 1919, the Nestlé Company arrived in Oregon. What it found was a condensary almost completed in Bandon, an unused condensary in Mc-Minnville, and a developing dairy industry east along the Coquille River and south along the coast to Denmark. The condensed milk could be shipped from Bandon to San Francisco by sea, and both Coos and Curry county dairy farmers would supply all the fresh milk that Nestlé would need. All the signs were positive, and on January 16, 1919, Nestlé Company bought both plants for $250,000 from the struggling Giebisch and Joplin Company.⁵

In the early 1920s, the Moore Mill and Lumber Company had a contract with the Nestlé Condensary to provide the lumber for shook — pieces of wood used to make boxes. Many years later, in the 1940s, the company moved its truck shop into the condensary building, where it remained until the 1970s.

Courtesy of the author

It was evident from the beginning that Nestlé intended the Bandon plant to be larger than the operation in McMinnville and possibly the largest and best equipped condensary in the United States. In January 1919, the Telephone-Register reported that while "the McMinnville plant would eventually use 120,000 pounds of milk daily," the Bandon plant "will have a capacity of 250,000 pounds of milk daily." On February 27, the Western World reported: "the plant is being built for permanency and with a view to the very highest of quality of production." A few days later, A. Boughner, Nestlé's Pacific Coast manager, assured owners in McMinnville that Nestlé was in superb financial position and described how the company planned to improve and update the condensary. He advised farmers not to sell their cows because they would certainly go up in value and announced that the company planned to pay each dairy farmer individually rather than through a league or association.⁷ Agriculturists began promoting Coos and Curry counties as a dairyman's paradise. The March 6, 1919, Western World quoted a Professor Fitts, who exclaimed that "Coos county leads the whole state in raising corn." A few months later, on August 7, 1919, the newspaper reported: "When the industry becomes fully developed there will be no better area for dairying. Grass almost unequaled mild climate, corn such as would make Illinois, Kansas, Missouri jealous — good cows, dairymen and markets."

The excitement of having a worldwide corporation in Bandon and descriptions of Coos and Curry counties as a paradise for the dairy business brought inquiries from people interested in moving to Bandon. The Western World published news articles detailing the dairies that were being bought and sold and included information on the number of acres and cows changing hands, along with the sales conditions, the prices paid, and the names of buyers and sellers. The success of the condensary seemed assured. Only one obstacle loomed — the Oregon Dairyman's Co-operative League, a group that Nestlé had effectively sidestepped by making it clear that the company wanted to deal directly with dairy farmers.⁸

The Dairymen's League had been organized in the Portland district just after World War I. From the league's inception, it had provided dairy owners with the ability to bargain collectively and a way to get higher prices for their milk.⁹ To join the League, farmers had to sign a five-year contract guaranteeing that their milk would be sold to the cooperative only. In order to maintain the leverage needed to keep prices up, the League forbade its members to sell to businesses such as condensaries. Nestlé refused to deal with the cooperative and for about two years a battle of words was waged — the League against Nestlé, Nestlé against the League, League member against the League, and, finally, the League against its own members.

In the meantime, Nestlé was building up its business in Bandon, establishing routes to bring fresh milk to the condensary. One truck route began at 8:00 a.m. in Denmark and then ran along the coast and into Curry County. The other left Coquille at 7:30 a.m. on the steamer Telegraph and proceeded west on the Coquille River with crew members who would pick up the fresh milk at dairy owners' docks. At Coquille, Nestlé paid $3,250 for 125 feet of riverfront property, where the company built a shipping and receiving warehouse on a rail line. The Bandon plant could now receive supplies and also ship its goods to San Francisco. On Monday, September 1, 1919, the Nestlé Company of Bandon, Oregon, opened its doors to incoming fresh milk and began to produce evaporated milk. By October 30, at least forty people were employed at the new plant, and practically everyone in the area was feeling the effects of the new industry — from those who engaged in shipping and steamer activity to those who made boxes and supplied equipment.¹⁰

In late 1919 and early 1920, Nestlé began buying new machinery that would enable the company to make sweetened condensed milk as well as evaporated milk. The company ordered nearly eleven tons of additional machinery, including another boiler, a condenser, and two sterilizers. It also built a receiving room and floating dock, constructed a system that provided water from the reservoir at Ferry Creek, and put in a new electric generator. Dairy owners were selling their milk directly to Nestlé, and the Bandon plant had been open only four months when administrators proclaimed "a total of 400,136 pounds of milk had been purchased during the poorest months of the year."¹¹

On February 19, 1920, the Western World reported that Nestlé had purchased two river steamers — the old sternwheeler Dispatch, which the company renamed John Wilde, and a smaller vessel, the Relief— enabling Nestlé to extend its milk route from Coquille east to Myrtle Point. The steamers carried "mail, fresh fruits, vegetables, milk, cream" and small numbers of livestock. Passengers rode on the top level, with cargo on the bottom. "Deckhands would jump off the boat while it was still moving, get the milk cans and jump back on board, " leaving empty ten-gallon milk cans complete with strainer and funnel to be refilled with fresh milk.¹²

Bandon's plant also produced its own basketball team, the Mermaids, which played teams from Riverton to Portland. The team apparently charged admission for at least some of their games, and it was not uncommon for there to be a dance following the game. During the dance, moonshine would be sold outside the hall, out of sight of the revenue agents.¹³

The company also sponsored or was part of incentive programs to help dairy owners. In early 1921, for example, farmers could exchange "scrub bulls" for purebreds at no cost. "Unions of better sires with scrub females," the January 6, Western World reported, "would produce a new generation capable of increased production thereby benefiting all the milk producing businesses." Later, Nestlé would sell hay to dairy farmers at cost, hoping to increase winter feeding and thereby more milk for the condensary during the lean winter months. In March 1921, Nestlé administrators hosted "a meeting of our patrons and dairymen held in the warehouse of our factory at Bandon at 11:30 a. m. Sunday, March 13." The company's riverboat would pick up all interested people and return them to Coquille that afternoon. On the day of the event, there was a tour of the condensary, a performance by the Bandon concert band, lunch in the Nestlé cafeteria, and a meeting with Frank B. Glass, a top Nestlé executive.¹⁴

During the tour, visitors learned about the tests the company did on its milk: "1) Sense of smell and taste, 2) temperature of the milk, 3) acid tests to determine fitness of the milk for condensing purposes." The condensed milk, a guide informed them, averaged "approximately 2.23 pounds of fluid whole milk to make one pound of evaporated milk." Visitors probably saw the storage warehouse, where the product was stored before shipping to San Francisco, along with the chemical laboratory and the powerhouse with its steam and electric motors. At the end of the tour, they entered a large warehouse, where they had the opportunity to hear from Nestlé's superintendent of milk supply for the Pacific Coast plants. "We will pay a price per hundred pounds of milk," Frank Glass told his audience, "the price so determined will be for milk testing four per cent butterfat with a proportionate increase and decrease for milk testing above or below four percent ... payments will be made monthly ... you will not be asked to sign a contract." Glass said that the company had invested over four hundred thousand dollars in Coos County and that the Bandon plant was one of the most modern "if not the finest in the United States.... It is equipped to handle 250,000 pounds of milk daily and take care of all the milk now produced in the two counties."¹⁵

Courtesy of the author

Ferry Creek, shown here with early morning mist rising off the water, may have been the source of the contaminated water that contributed to the decision to close the Nestlé Condensary in 1925.

Courtesy of the author

By April 21, 1921, Nestlé reported a daily intake of fresh milk thatwas almost double that of April in the previous year. Fresh milk production had increased all along the existing routes, and two new routes had been added north of Myrtle Point. The number of owners selling fresh milk to the condensary had increased by 30 percent. It was, Superintendent C.R. Loop said, "the best plant owned by the company on the Pacific Coast." In December, Nestlé reported to the community that the condensary had had a very good business year. The company encouraged farmers to build silos, cure hay, and plant barley and oats for winter feeding. At this peak time of the company's growth, it employed eighty men and twenty-five women. It had taken in 12,210,605 pounds of milk and had manufactured 6,500,000 pounds of condensed milk, including sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, and evaporated cream. Of Nestlé's seven plants on the Pacific Coast, Bandon was the only one manufacturing whole sterilized evaporated milk.¹⁶

The growth was not realized without some resistance, however. The Oregon Dairymen's Co-operative League fought with Nestlé from the day it opened its doors in September 1919 until January 1922. In December 1919, state agricultural official J.D. Mickle told an audience of farmers: "Dairymen have 3 alternatives, go with the Dairymen league, go with the cheese association, or go to ruin by sending their milk to the condensary at Bandon."¹⁷ If the League could attract at least 60 percent of the dairy owners, then it was certain it could control the supply of milk and demand the best prices. The League also offered dairy owners some insurance against fraud and cheating by saying it could inspect the company's testing and weighing procedures, which determined how much money Nestlé paid for milk. As Nestlé's influence in Bandon and its need for milk grew, the pressure on individual dairy owners to join the Dairymen's League also increased.

Even after signing a contract with the League, however, the owners' commitment to collective bargaining was not strong enough. In July 1920, Portland milk distributors leveled charges of graft against the League and decided not to buy any more milk from the cooperative. Despite having signed the League's five-year binding contract, owners in Coos and Curry counties chose to sell directly to Nestlé. The League responded by filing an injunction to prevent the Nestlé Company from paying those owners that were League members. At about the same time, League member John Zuppa filed suit claiming that the cooperative had misrepresented facts in the contract. On September 30, 1920, the Western World reported: "restraining order denied Dairymen's league loses in action of circuit court Multnomah." This legal decision literally threw open Nestlé's doors to all Coos and Curry county dairy owners. In essence, the court had ruled that the League's contracts "unduly restrained trade." The League responded by filing suit against one of its own members, E.C. Cochran, a Bandon dairyman and owner of forty cows, alleging that he had broken the contract by selling milk directly to Nestlé. "In all," historian Dow Beckham writes, "the association filed 21 lawsuits against Coos county owners and six suits in Curry county."¹⁸

The League was coming apart at the seams. The League president decided to try to restore farmers' confidence in the organization by calling a meeting of Coos and Curry county dairy owners, representatives of the business community, and even officials from Nestlé (who did not attend because they received the invitation too late). The meeting was set for Tuesday, December 14, 1920. The assembly "was largely attended, nearly all the league's members of Coos and Curry county, numerous businessmen and other interested citizens." The first speaker was W.J. Sweet, the "owner of one of the most successful dairy farms in the district," who reported that he had examined the League's financial records and found them to be in order. Next, according to news reports, League president A.D. Katz reminded the audience that "Nestlé's was against the league for business reasons. That Nestlé's had a better opportunity for profit by dealing with individuals then with organized bodies of dairymen." Further, it was Katz's "opinion that the price being paid at the condensary for milk was due to the league." He then reaffirmed the League's position on binding contracts and "asked those members who were willing to stay with the league to hold up their hands and a great many hands went up."¹⁹

The meeting was reported in the December 16 Western World, along with a contentious letter from the Nestlé Company: "with so called Oregon dairymen's league Nestle's provided local owners a third market for their milk in addition to butter and cheese." The letter concluded: "we strongly resent league officials unfair and vicious attacks on us and their campaign of vilification conducted for many months and we believe in view of our record in Coos county that any repetition of these attacks should be equally resented by the people of Bandon." Many attempts were made to rebuild the Dairymen's League, but nothing of consequence ever materialized. A year later, on December 27, 1921, at the urging of their own members, League owners voted for liquidation.²⁰

Nineteen twenty-two looked promising for the Nestlé Company. In fact, it looked promising for just about every business in Bandon. The Western World ran a headline on its masthead that read: "Where productive soil and tidewater meet lumbering, mining dairying, stock raising." By May, Bandon had its own hydroelectric plant, a source of energy that Nestlé was quick to use. Real-estate transfers were increasing, and there was a "substantial demand for property." Two years after the Dairymen's League collapse, the Western World was able to report that the Bandon condensary was "one of the largest ... in the world." The factory took in approximately 60 percent of all the fresh milk produced in Coos and Curry counties, and there was potential for increasing the number and size of dairy farms even more. ²¹

In January 1924, the city and the company made an effort to combine their water systems. The city needed extra water for emergencies such as fires, and Nestlé needed extra water in case its pipeline burst. It is not clear from news reports whether or not the merger ever occurred, but it is clear that the condensary had a larger water supply than the city did. Both systems were being supplied by above-ground water sources, Nestlé's from a dammed-up Ferry Creek and the city's from underground springs. No wells had been dug for either.

The first sign of water contamination at Nestlé was reported on April 3, 1924: "R.B. Bush of San Francisco, a company chemist is here to make bacteriological tests of the water supply.... the yeast content of the water supply had given trouble in the manufacture of export milk.... further tests are being made to determine if the condition has been remedied." Dow Beckham explains: "foreign sales of Bandon's sweetened milk became fermented and the company traced the problem to the Bandon plant. The pasteurized and evaporated milk under the Alpine brand continued, but the sweetened milk was not pasteurized. The sugar did the preserving, but the yeast contamination spoiled it in the can."²²

The Nestlé Company bought riverfront property on the Coquille River in order to build a shipping and receiving warehouse. At this location, the company could ship and receive goods by both water and rail.

Courtesy of the author

It is a rumor among Bandon's old-timers that moonshiners contributed to the contamination of the water by discarding their refuse into Ferry Creek. Another source could have been the natural yeast from "wild Himalaya and Evergreen blackberries, common to Coos County." Ferry Creek, which flows from the hills above Bandon and along its northern city line, could very likely have carried other refuse and contaminates that could have contributed to making the water unsuitable for manufacturing sweetened condensed milk. It may be that if Nestlé had thoroughly cleaned its equipment and had sunk a well to get pure water that the company would have had no trouble with contamination.²³

At the same time that the condensary was having trouble with its water, the company was implementing cost-cutting measures. Instead of importing shook (pieces of wood for making boxes) from California, the condensary contracted with Moore Mill and Lumber Company to provide the lumber and had it planed at the Acme Mill. The assembly of "approximately 150,000 cases" would be done at "the box department now being installed on the second floor of the condensary." The company was also installing "a plant for pasteurizing cream," and "new elevators for loading and unloading cans.... the handling of individual cans will be by machinery which will facilitate the work and reduce the cost."²⁴

In March 1925, the Western World reported that Nestlé's was "one of the largest industrial plants in the city . . . [using] the most efficient methods and machinery known to the milk condensing trade." The condensary could handle up to a quarter million pounds of milk a day and brought in milk from Port Orford to the south and Myrtle Point to the east. The plant, however, was still having problems with its condensed sweet milk. As Beckham writes: "the company took drastic measures. After struggling with the problem a year it stopped production of the sweetened milk. May 1, 1925 it took the John Wilde off the river run above Coquille to cut production quantities. Over 20,000 pounds of milk daily." Just six months later, company superintendent T.A. MacDonald announced that the Bandon plant would close on November 1, 1925. The milk supply during the winter months was too small, and the company was losing money.²⁵

Hope lingered for years that the plant would reopen, and food-producing companies did look at the plant over the years. One such inquiry was from "J.P. Meyenberg president of the Meyenberg evaporated milk co.," who spent some time examining the plant. Although he told the paper that he believed there was an ample milk supply and he hoped dairy farmers would support his company's move, nothing ever materialized from his visit. The milk supply may not have been as strong as he suggested; and at the time, two new cheese factories were in the making, which would absorb good percentage of the milk supply. In January 1927, a fruit- and vegetable-canning company looked interested, but again nothing happened. Rumors about potential buyers persisted, but it was not until February 20, 1930, that an actual user of the building emerged when Dalen Manufacturing took over the plant to produce "cedar battery separators."²⁷

Jean Heer's history of Nestlé reports that at the time when the Bandon condensary was being closed, the company decided "to reduce the volume of American business by the sale of a number of factories and to concentrate production for the supply and transport of milk." The cost of doing business at Bandon may simply have been greater than the company experienced in those West Coast condensaries that were closer to the centers of transportation and shipping. Dow Beckham writes that "[Superintendent] Mcdonald indicated that practically all of the local production was shipped to the foreign markets ... the company had lost those markets." And it is still uncertain how large a role the polluted water had on the decision to close the plant.

In Bandon today, Ferry Creek — which is likely the stream that carried the tainted water that may have helped shut down the Nestlé Condensary — still meanders down from the hills and empties into the Coquille River, not far from where the old plant used to stand. Even though the condensary closed, the building served a long and useful economic life in Bandon. After Dalen Manufacturing, the building housed U.S. Army vehicles and equipment during World War II, and the Moore Mill Lumber Company operated there in the 1940s until the 1990s. The building was dismantled in 2001, but the site still evokes the time when, for five and a half years, the Nestlé Condensary helped shape the lives of many who lived in Bandon.

Notes

^1.�Bandon Western World, January 30, 1919.

^2.� Ibid., December 6, 1917, January 24, 1918.

^3.�McMinnville Weekly Telephone-Register, April 26, 1918.

^4.�Western World, August 22, 1918. See also Portland Oregonian, January 28, 1919.

^5.�Portland Telegram, January 28, 1919; Western World, January 30, 1919; Oregonian, January 28, 1919.

^6.�McMinnville Telephone-Register, January 31, 1919.

^7.�Telephone-Register, March 21, 1919.

^8.�Western World, August 28, 1919.

^9.� Ibid., December 16, 1920.

^10.� Ibid., August 28, August 14, September 4, 1919. For information on the manufacture of evaporated milk, see Otto Frederick Hunziker, Condensed Milk and Milk Powder, 5^th ed. (La Grange, Ill.: author, 1935).

^11.�Western World, December 11, 1919, February 12, 1920. See also John D. Weaver, Carnation: The First 75 Years, 1899–1974 (Los Angeles: Anderson, Ritchie, and Simon, 1974), 27.

^12.� Centennial Book Committee, Bandon Then and Now (Coos Bay, Ore.: Centennial Book Committee, 1989), 99; Dow Beckham, interview by author, Coos Bay, Ore., July 23, 2001.

^13.�Western World, May 20, December 9, 1920; Beckham interview. See Western World, January 20, February 10, 1921.

^14.�Coquille Valley Sentinel, March 11, 1921; Western World, March 17, 1921.

^15.� Hunziker, Condensed Milk and Milk Powder, 40; Western World, March 17, 1921.

^16.�Western World, April 21, December 21, 1921.

^17.�Western World, December 11, 1919.

^18.�Western World, July 22, November 18, September 23, September 30, November 18, 1920; Dow Beckham, Bandon by the Sea (Coos Bay, Ore.: Arago Books, 1997), 99.

^19.�Western World, December 16, 1920; Beckham, Bandon, 76.

^20.�Western World, December 22, 1921, January 19, 1922.

^21.�Western World, December 28, 1922, January 1924, special issue.

^22.� Ibid., April 3, 1924; Beckham, Bandon, 101.

^23.� See Beckham, Bandon, and Hunziker, Condensed Milk and Milk Powder, 431.

^24.�Western World, April 3, 1924.

^25.� Ibid.; Beckham, Bandon, 101.

^26.�Western World, April 22, 1926.

^27.� Ibid.; Western World, January 6, 1927, February 20, 1930.

^28.� Jean Heer, World Events 1866–1966: The First Hundred Years of Nestlé (Lausanne: Imprimérie Réunies, 1966), 79; Beckham, Bandon, 101.

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