Overbey Apiaries LLC

05/07/2020

07/03/2018

The empty lot at the corner of 5th and Pine, to the east of Jim's Clothing, used be the location of the Dawson Co-operative Creamery. This two-story brick building with a fancy porte-cochère for deliveries was built in 1920 after the first creamery south of the river burned down. The addition visible to the north was a poultry dressing plant that at one time employed 45 people and processed one and a half million pounds of poultry a year. The creamery produced butter and milk products. It also bought and sold eggs, giving many farmers' wives their only income -- "egg money." As farmers ceased dairy operations, business waned and the creamery portion closed in 1958. Al and Doris Twite operated the produce portion for a while, with a Montgomery Ward agency, Oak Grove Dairy, Overby Apiaries and others using the building before it was demolished. This photo can be dated to 1949 or 1950. The poultry addition was built in 1946, and the flyer on the electric pole advertises the Chippewa County Fair as being Sept. 8 - 11. Those dates were Thursday-Sunday in 1949, a likely run for a fair. The truck's bug-eye headlights indicates that it is from the 1930s. The postcard photo is courtesy of the Lac qui Parle History Museum.

02/03/2017