Armour & Co.

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Refrigerated railroad cars such as this one were essential to Armour & Co.
 as it went about moving western meat products to East Coast markets.

 Sketch courtesy James E. Casto

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In 1900, as the western meat packing industry began supplying
East Coast meat markets, Armour & Co. selected
Huntington as a site for one of its sales offices.

The late attorney/historian George Seldon Wallace wrote
about Armour’s operation here in his 1947 book,
“Huntington through Seventy-Five Years.”

“In three years, the growth of the business warranted the company in
erecting its own branch house with ample refrigerating and other
 facilities which were the most modern then available,” Wallace
 wrote. “The cost of Armour’s first Huntington branch house
was $72,939, and more thousands have been spent
 in intervening years keeping the branch house
 modern and up to date in every particular.”

At the time Wallace wrote, the company also maintained a district sales
office here that covered West Virginia and most of Kentucky.
The Armour facility, located on the northwest corner of 2nd
Avenue and 11th Street, was supervised by Huntington
District Manager H.D. Satterwhite and employed 26
 people — a figure Wallace considered exemplary,
considering World War II and postwar
 meat shortages.

Most of Armour’s Huntington employees, Wallace wrote,
 “are natives of the city and all of them are loyal citizens
 with their roots in the community and their
interests inseparably linked with
 the progress of Huntington.”

Over the years, Armour & Co. has gone through a
 series of restructurings, takeovers and mergers.
Today it’s owned by Smithfield Foods. It
closed its Huntington location
 decades ago.

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Note:  This Article and picture appeared in the Herald-Dispatch Newspaper on Aug. 14, 2024.

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