Salina Post proudly presents Flashback Friday in partnership with the Smoky Hill Museum. Enjoy a weekly tidbit of local history from the staff at Salina Post and the Smoky Hill Museum as we present "Salina-Flashback Fridays."
By SALINA POST
With dreams of trade and industry, J. K. Forney moved to Abilene from eastern Pennsylvania in 1879 and started farming.
Once Forney began raising cattle, he realized the potential of the Kansas dairying industry.
Seven years later, Forney began the Belle Springs Creamery 12 miles south of Abilene to produce primarily one dairy product — butter.
A writer for The Kansas City Journal described the Belle Springs Creamery as using "oceans of cream — not the whole milk, mind you, but oceans of the cream itself — to manufacture the butter turned out by the Belle Springs Creamery during these thirty years," in an article from Sunday, Nov. 26, 1916.
The Belle Springs Creamery
Forney began Belle Springs Creamery in a factory south of Abilene in 1886. The larger plant allowed Belle Springs to begin interstate trade, expanding to produce thousands of pounds of butter, ice cream and other dairy products annually.
After outgrowing that factory in 1889, the business moved to a larger plant one-half mile east of Abilene. It also opened a plant in Salina in 1897, which focused primarily on large-scale butter production.
Though this new plant produced more butter, the now-incorporated creamery outgrew the factory 13 years later in 1902 and constructed its largest plant in Abilene, producing literal tons of butter.
According to the Smoky Hill Museum, the creamery's management consisted of President Forney, Vice President M. L. Hoffman, Treasurer Jacob S. Engle and Secretary and General Manager E. H. Forney.
READ MORE: 📸 Flashback Friday: Salina Post - The town of Kipp - Vol. 30
In 1906, former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower started one of his earliest jobs at only 16 years old at the Abilene Belle Springs factory. He worked at the plant until he went to West Point in 1911.
His father, David Eisenhower, moved to Abilene to begin a career in refrigeration after graduating from school in Texas. David Eisenhower worked for Belle Springs Creamery for more than a decade.
The creamery produced butter that shipped to 20 states, reaching from Texas to California and Kansas' neighboring states. In 1942, Belle Springs Creamery sold to a larger regional corporation and ended its operations in Salina and Abilene.