(Second of two parts)

On the afternoon of April 9, 1938, an employee at the Albert Lea Food Products Company plant, located beside the railroad tracks near the corner of Euclid and Adams Avenues, saw heavy smoke coming out of a roof cupola on the main building. This was followed by an explosion and fire that soon consumed most of the structure.

The Albert Lea Fire Department, then a volunteer unit, responded to the alarm. The Saturday afternoon fire also attracted several thousand spectators.

According to the Tribune’s 1938 news article about the fire, this was the fourth blaze at this particular site. The three earlier fires had involved the buildings of the pioneer Albert Lea Milling Company, plus several other firms using different corporate names like the Mills of Albert Lea to make flour and other grain-based products at this site since 1884.

In 1938, the Albert Lea Food Products Company plant was producing rye flour, &uot;Cream O’the Crop&uot; brand flour, dried buttermilk and had just installed new equipment for the making of doughnut, cake and pancake flours. All this equipment, plus 15,000 bushels of wheat, were destroyed by the fire, which was later determined to be caused by spontaneous combustion of grain dust.

The volunteer firemen tried to control the fire but were unable to get to the flames because of the corrugated sheet iron plates on the outside of the building. They also had to contend with sparks being blown over nearby buildings by a light northwest wind. And not far away to the north was the bulk plant of the Standard Oil Company of Indiana. The firefighters concentrated most of their early work on keeping the intense blaze away from the bulk plant and extinguishing several smaller fires on nearby buildings and roofs.

The blaze was intense enough to partly burn or destroy utility poles near the building. On the south side of the firm, wooden ties on a side track plus the main line of the east-west Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad caught fire. However, several boxcars on the Milwaukee side track were quickly pulled away by a switch engine from the nearby north-south Minneapolis and St. Louis Railroad.

The high smoke plume created by the fire was visible in Mason City, Iowa, news reports said.

One of the plant’s steel smokestacks fell between several firemen at the end of a hose line and their pumper truck. However, no one was injured in the fire that did $250,000 worth of damage.

A news article in the April 11, 1938, issue of the Tribune reported:

&uot;Since the Albert Lea Food Products Company started operations in Albert Lea three years ago, there hasn’t been a day that some improvement hasn’t been in progress. This improvement has either been adding machinery or making more room for larger capacity. The owners of this plant have never asked Albert Lea for any assistance while building this fine industry in this community which means so much to the people in general &045; especially the dairy and creamery people.

&uot;The Albert Lea Food Products Company is affiliated with the Ward Dry Milk Company of St. Paul and with the Nation Dairy Products Company.

&uot;Saturday’s fire was the most destructive one in Albert Lea in several years.

&uot;It was fortunate that fire occurred at a time when full (fire department) manpower could be quickly assembled.&uot;

When the plant was rebuilt later in 1938 or early 1939, there was evidently a change from flour milling to the processing of dairy products. Also, there was a name change, according to the 1939-1940 city directory. It was Kraft-Phenix Cheese Corp. (Ward Milk Products Division).

The use of the word phenix, or phoenix, had a rather interesting connection with the fire.

Phoenix is the name of a city out in Arizona. It’s also a word described in the dictionary as &uot;a legendary bird held to live for centuries and then burn itself to death and rise from the ashes.&uot; And the Albert Lea plant had certainly risen from the ashes.

Through the years the processing plant near the corner of Adams and Euclid Avenues and just north of the railroad tracks along that portion of Front Street has had several corporate names. These include Kraft Foods Co., Consolidated Products Co., Freeborn Foods Co., and the present Kerry Ingredients.

Today, the main plant of Kerry Ingredients is located on the site of the old flour mill which was destroyed by fire in 1938. The north portion of its long structure beside the railroad tracks now includes a part of the Standard Oil bulk plant that was saved by firemen in the spectacular blaze which occurred 65 years ago this month.