Western Railroad Discussion > Colorado Sweet Gold Being Demolished - Johnstown, CO

The fortunes of railroads come and go. I noted Nov. 3, 2005 the Colorado Sweet Gold (corn syrup processing plant) at Johnstown, CO, was being demolished. It once was part of the Great Western Sugar operation where sugar beets were processed into sugar.

When did Colorado Sweet Gold Close?

Where is their SW-1, The Kernel?

From Colorado Sweet Gold website;

The Johnstown Sugar Factory was built in 1926 as part of the Great Western Sugar
Company's expansion and came into operation in 1927. Sugar was extracted from
molasses that came from other sugar beet processing plants in Colorado. The plant
also made MSG during the 1950's, however, that portion of the plant was closed in 1977.
The remainder of the plant was converted at that time to manufacture high fructose corn
syrup, which is used in soft drinks and other food products.

The plant was sold in 1983 to Adolph Coors Co. Coors operated the factory as a
subsidiary under six different names until February of 1999 when it was sold to
Colorado Sweet Gold, LLC.

I seem to recall that a portion of this facility caught fire a few weeks ago. I think maybe it was one of the silos or storage places which caught fire.

The grain elevator in town caught fire. It's been torn down. The Great Western Sugar factory/Colorado Sweet Gold was about a mile east of town.

In the early 60's on some of our weekends on the GWR, we followed the 51 which took the run to Johnstown. They spent a lot of time switching at the plant and sometimes made a rare trip to Milliken. We got some shots of them switching at the plant along with the 44 tonner assigned there. That was a long time ago, but was very real at the time. We heard from the crews that they preferred the 51 for this work versus the "six bits" (75). At that time we knew that the plant was capable of extracting more sugar from molassas from other plants. The 51 brought these cars to Johnstown, and one morning I tasted some of the molassas dripping from a tank car. Not too tasty. . . Joe S.