Claus Spreckels was born in Germany, but emigrated to Hawaii and started farming sugar beets there as a young man. He made money: in the 1870s he built a summer home in Aptos. He was thrown out of The Kingdom of Hawaii in 1886, so made California his full time home and set about building a sugar beet factory there. He built a huge beet sugar refinery in Watsonville in 1888, and for several years the crop that dominated Pajaro Valley agriculture was sugar beets. In the 50ıs and 60ıs valley farmers had had a disastrous experience with potatoes. When too many farmers tried to replicate their neighborsı success, the supply outstripped demand, and the price crashed. Potatoes were stored, and finally dumped at the foot of Depot Hill at Soquel Landing (later named Capitola), where they lay rotting for years. Spreckles convinced farmers to produce the sugar beet crop he wanted by writing contracts and fixing the crop price as the beets were being planted. Looking for more profits from their rich soil, Pajaro farmers soon began growing apples, lettuce and other crops. The beet acreage moved southward and in 1899, rather than bear the cost of hauling the beets to the factory by train (he had built his own railroad), Spreckels move the factory to the beets. At a location outside Salinas he build a sugar beet processing plant that operated until 1982.
The factory and surrounding area were a company town: Spreckels built housing for factory laborers. A progression of immigrants worked in the beet factory, just as in the fields in the Salinas and Pajaro valleys: Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Slavs, Germans and Mexicans. The beet factory also employed some groups not often seen elsewhere in the region: Sikhs, Danes and Swiss. Spreckels left his name on a road in Aptos, the town where his last beet sugar refinery stood, and a town on the Island of Maui, “Spreckelsville."
Photo No. 311L33 ©2000 Marc Shargel
Photographed at Aptos, CA
