Clarks Grove Cooperative Creamery
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Clarks Grove Cooperative Creamery
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The 1927 Clarks Grove Cooperative Creamery from the northeast
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| Location | Main Street East & Independence Avenue, Clarks Grove, Minnesota |
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| Coordinates | 43°45′49″N 93°19′44″W / 43.76361°N 93.32889°WCoordinates: 43°45′49″N 93°19′44″W / 43.76361°N 93.32889°W |
| Area | Less than one acre |
| Built | 1927 |
| Built by | James Nelson |
| Architect | Carl H. Buetow and C. Kampfer |
| NRHP reference # | 86000480 |
| Designated | March 20, 1986 |
The Clarks Grove Cooperative Creamery is a historic creamery in Clarks Grove, Minnesota, United States. It was established in 1890 as one of the first cooperative creameries in Minnesota. The Clarks Grove Cooperative Creamery used new technology and a well-organized cooperative system. It became a model for the Minnesota dairy industry. Ten years later, there were more than 550 cooperative creameries in the state.
The original building burned down and was replaced with a new facility in 1927 which included a second-floor meeting hall. Still standing, this building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986 for having local significance in the themes of agriculture, architecture, commerce, and social history. It was nominated for its seminal status and influence on the state's cooperative creameries, as well as its association with the small local community of Danish Americans and their outsized success in dairy farming, its role as a social center, and being Minnesota's best example of its type architecturally.
In the 1870s and 1880s, farmers in southern Minnesota were turning their wheat fields into dairy farms. Yet making butter on the farm was difficult. It required a lot of labor, mostly done by women. And many people did not like farm butter, because it took on the flavors of other food from the farmer's kitchen.
After an 1884 visit to Denmark, farmer Hans Peter Jensen came back to Minnesota with the idea for a cooperative creamery. In Denmark, Jensen learned about innovations in butter-making that could transform the dairy industry in Minnesota. But these new technologies would be difficult for individual farmers to access. Minnesota farmers typically owned only a dozen cows and small dairy farms were not very profitable.
Cooperatives, or "coops," helped by pooling farmers' resources. Farmers brought their milk to the coop. At the coop, butter was made in large batches using the new technology of cream separation. Cooperative farmers benefited from the efficiency of the factory, and they shared the profits and losses with each other rather than investors.
The Clarks Grove Cooperative Creamery became a model for the rest of the state. It was made famous by Theophilus Levi (T.L.) Haecker. Haecker was a dairy science professor at the University of Minnesota, and he was known as the "Father of Minnesota Dairying."
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