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Stockyards book takes honors (May 22, 2007) – “A Way of Life: A Story of the Sioux City Stockyards” has won the silver award in the Best Regional Non-Fiction Books, Midwest Region, of the 11th annual Independent Publishers Book Awards. Additionally, the Yards book took a bronze in the 2007 Summit Creative Awards.
“A Way of Life” was written by Marcia
Poole, director of the Center. The book
covers more than 140 years of Sioux City
Stockyards history. George Lindblade and
Christine McAvoy, of G.R. Lindblade, were
photo editors. Lou Ann Lindblade designed
the richly illustrated book. “A Way of Life”
was published by the Sioux City Lewis &
Clark Interpretive Center Association with
funding from Missouri River Historical
Development, Inc. (MRHD) and printed by
Anderson Brothers of Sioux City.
The late Stanley Evans, retired President and Chairman of the Board of the Live Stock National Bank, was advisor to the project. The book was released in May 2006 and has sold almost 1,700 copies. The Independent Publisher Book Regional Awards spotlight titles from throughout North America. This year’s competition attracted 688 entries. Books were judged on quality and regional significance. The Summit Creative Awards recognizes accomplishments of creative groups in 13 categories. This year’s competition drew entries from 26 countries. “A Way of Life” is available at the Sioux City Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center and at siouxcitygifts.com. The book begins the Sioux City Stockyards story with the role of hogs as the “mortgage lifters” of the nation’s meatpacking industry, first in Cincinnati and then Chicago. It moves on to the arrival of James Booge in Sioux City in 1858 and his rapid ascent as a national leader in meatpacking. The chronology follows milestones, including the arrival of the railroad in Sioux City, Booge’s move to South Bottoms, development of refrigerated technology, the rise of beef in the latter part of the 19t of the 19th century and the advent of farm-to-market trucking in the early 20th century. Poole illuminates the connection between Corps of Discovery history and the Sioux City Stockyards Company. She highlights great challenges and tragedies, including labor strikes, devastating floods and the Swift & Co. plant explosion in 1949. “The Yards district and its allied industries were at the heart of Sioux City for more than a century. They pumped life into every part of the community and into places hundreds of miles beyond,” she says. Festivals and fairs, 4-H kids and Babe Ruth exhibitions figure into the colorful history. Pork Days attracted more than 20,000 people for a single event on Dace Street; Truckers’ Days honored the people who moved millions of head of livestock in and out of the Yards each year; and masterful communicators and boosters, including the Stockettes, supported the Yards as Sioux City’s economic core. “You can’t talk about the history of the Yards without talking about the South Bottoms and immigrants, urban development, Floyd River flood control, the White Horse Mounted Patrol, Half Moon Lake and dozens of allied industries,” Poole says.Poole says.Poole says. The theme that runs throughout is the Yards’ tradition of integrity. Sales were finalized with a handshake that was honored virtually without question.t question. “A Way of Life” is also the story of an industry that changed radically, beginning in the 1950s. Tradition gave way to new ways of marketing and gradually the Yards faded as as as as as as the place to buy and sell livestock. Then came the devastating Livestock Exchange Building fire of May 15, 1998, the final auction on March 28, 2002, and an end to a way of life. The Sioux City Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center, exit 149 off I-29, is a private, non-profit institution built and sustained by Missouri River Historical Development, Inc., (MRHD) and dedicated to “Commemorating a history of encounters.” Admission, all programs, exhibits and activities are free. For more information, call 712-224-5242 or visit www.siouxcitylcic.com.
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