Morgan Canning Plant: the iconic local canning plant that brought produce to the tables of many

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — If you have a garden, you may have picked and maybe even canned your tomatoes and peas by now. The warm weather has given us a few bonus weeks for vegetables.

Years ago, Americans relied on Utah’s canned vegetables for much of the winter. At one time, Utah factories canned 25,000 cases of peas every day in the fall.

A lot of the harvest time in Utah resulted in Utah peas. These peas would end up at the Morgan Canning Plant.

A man by the name of James Anderson turned home canning into a major industry — and this was not any small feat for Anderson, his late daughter Alice Jameson told ABC4’s Craig Wirth about 30 years ago.

“I could smell the peas when they went down in these big round things — vats to cook. I can still smell those peas,” Jameson said in 1995.

The enthusiastic James Anderson led the workers as a cheerleader, and the canning plant employed hundreds of Utahns, in both Morgan and Smithfield.

Anderson and his company canned several brands — such as Snow Kap and Sure Good — and all were sold as “those good peas.”

However, shelling peas was a very difficult venture. In this time and day, factories have automated much of the process, but back then it was all done by hand.

Unfortunately, the dream was cut short in 1926 when James Anderson died. Later on, there would be frozen foods.

As late as the 1990s, buildings that were once the Morgan Canning Plant stood in Morgan, where it all began. The Morgan County Historical Society took photos of the buildings to document the history of the structures that once paced industry in Utah.

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