The Beet Sugar Gazette was a monthly publication covering the entire sugar beet Industry around the world. With offices in Chicago, it was published on the 5th day of each month. Each month its pages featured articles on sugar beet cultivation and the sugar manufacturing process, and reports from correspondents in sugar producing areas or re-prints of local newspaper articles on local sugar factories. As such it often printed information giving us valuable information on life in early Los Alamitos and the surrounding area. This report is from the November 1900 issue of the Sugar Beet.
LOS ALAMITOS, CAL.
Editor Beet Sugar Gazette:—On the Los Cerritos Ranch water development still goes on. Contractor J. B. Proctor being engaged in drilling another 12-inch well on the north end of the ranch. The lake near Bixby Station[ref]This would probably be present Bouton Lake in Lakewood Country Club, in the middle of the 8,000 acres which the Bixby Land Co. sold to William A. and J. Ross Clark, who built the Los Alamitos Sugar Factory in 1898.[/ref] which has an available storage capacity of over sixty-five million gallons, is now full to overflowing. This will serve from 2.500 to 3.500 acres of good beet, barley and alfalfa lands.
The farmers on the Los Alamitos and Los Cerritos Ranches are greatly encouraged by the liberal terms in the new contract for 1901. As a consequence the rental of beet land has proceeded beyond expectations, and farmers are busy preparing the land for the crop. The Los Cerritos large dairy herd is now thriving or. beet pulp at the factory yards. [ref]
Superintendent G. S. Dyer has severed his connection with the factory to take effect next month. Mr. H. C. Lawrence, who has been at the head of the chemical department since 1897, is in the line” of promotion for the place. [ref]G.S. Dyer had been involved with Alamitos sugar operations from the veryu beginning. His father had built the first successful beet sugar factory in the United States 30 years earlier, and the Dyer Co had build the sugar factories in Utah and Los Alamitos. Dyer and architect Frank Capitain had the original option to build a factory on the Bixby lands, but they couldn’t arrange financing on their own. Capitain then enticed the Clarks to get involved. Capitain then designed the factory and laid out the new town. Dyer oversaw the construction of the factory and its first three years of operation. It would not be unreasonable to assume that the Clarks, who had been used to doing things their own way, would bump heads with Capitain and Dyer’s independence. Capitain ended his association with the factory and town just before its opening in 1897. [/ref]