Tovrea's

The pages of an old album tell the beginning of Tourea's in Arizona. In 1898, Ed Tourea and Henry Clay owned a butcher shop in Jerome, a busy shop in a busy mining town. Ed Tovrea (in the brown Stetson) was a good merchant, displayed his wares as attractively as possible.

OVREA'S The Story Of An Adventure In Beef

A FREIGHT WAGON, hauled by eight oxen, came rattling and creaking into Holbrook, Arizona, one evening early in 1881. A nineteen year old youth, wearing the marks of long and hard travel, got off the wagon, stretched, looked around, and approached a nearby storekeeper.

"I'm Ed Tovrea," he said. "Have some freight for you from New Mexico."

The storekeeper looked at the young freighter, thought, "He's young to be a freighter," and

BY RAYMOND CARLSON EDITOR, ARIZONA HIGHWAYS

then sized up the youngster quickly and carefully, as you always had to do with newcomers on the frontier. The storekeeper saw a stout young man, with an honest, sincere poise about him with a frank, a fearless look in his eyes, and a strong handclasp. The storekeeper Edward A. Tovrea, the founder of Tovrea's in Arizona. A native of Illinois, came to Arizona in the '80's. This distinguished Arizonan had faith in the state, the energy and will to achieve. saw a man. You had to be a man, and a good one at that, regardless of your years, to earn your living freighting on the frontier. Then and there, in Holbrook in 1881, the name of Tovrea became known in Arizona. The next fifty years saw Ed Tovrea become one of the important men of Arizona and of the west, saw the name of "Tovrea" become the mark of leadership in western beef, saw the rise and continued development of a great industrial empire.

Tovrea's today is one of the big names in American beef. The plant, near Phoenix, has recorded constant growth, is one of the most modern packing plants in the world. (Kegley photos.) Horses and wagons hauled merchandise for Ed Tovrea and the Sonora Packing company in Cananea, Mexico, in 1908. Compare this to the great trucks and trailers of Tovrea's today.

Ed Tovrea (left) had great pride in his early-day markets, and from these arose the Tovrea Packing company of today.

Philip E. Tovrea, son of old Ed, is continuing the name and tradition of Tovrea in western beef. Becoming general manager of the Tovrea Packing company in 1929, and now president, he has guided the firm in expansion and importance begun by his father. (Kay Mart Studio Photo) The Brewery Gulch Market of Ed Tovrea in Bisbee in 1912 was noted for good meats and fine service. The decorations showed the management knew how to display merchandise.

The storekeeper, greeting young Ed Tovrea, would have been surprised had he known that in 1941 the Tovrea Packing Company, founded by Ed Tovrea, and whose leadership was to be continued by a son, did a gross business of $8,033,613.38, and in that year slaughtered 52,287 head of cattle, 3,417 calves, 48,473 hogs and 16,203 sheep. Young Ed, back there in 1881 standing beside his sweating ox team, would have been more surprised if he could have known that in 1941 a fleet of great trucks and trailers, bearing the name "Tovrea," together with other motorized equipment of the firm, would travel in excess of two million miles, the bulk over the highways of Arizona but with countless miles put in over the highways of California, Nevada, Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas.

The story of Ed Tovrea, of his packing plant the story of industrial enterprise continued by Ed's son, Phil this is a story of hard work and wise planning this is a story of an adventure in beef.

With our nation at war we are awakened to the vital importance of certain things that yesterday we casually took for granted. In our opinion no better time could be selected, unfortunate as the cause might be, to pay tribute to the Tovrea Packing Company a firm of significance to Arizona and the west in these days of war. Tovrea's big red, white and blue trucks are easily recognized motor vehicles on the highways of Arizona, Nevada and California. They move in what might almost be termed perpetual motion as night and day they seek out cities, towns and isolated crossroad settlements which depend on their

The Bar-96 is a Tovrea ranch property between Florence and Oracle Junction.arrival for what has been termed man's most important single food-meat. Motor travelers, continually seeing these radiantly colored, refrigerated trucks wherever they happen to be in the Southwest cannot help but wonder about the tremendous organization obviously needed to keep an abundant supply of meat products ready for loading and shipping. For over fifty years, Tovrea's have faithfully represented both in a commercial and literal sense the largest source for transposing bulk of the raw materials of both our livestock and agricultural industries into the finished form required for human consumption. As our logical trading areas became more densely populated, as our feed crop areas spread and produced more feeds and our ranges and farms produced more cattle, sheep and hogs-Tovrea's kept abreast of the general progress and today their main processing plant located five miles east of Phoenix is considered as one of the most modern in the world.

Your imagination doesn't have to be vividto picture the contrast of a huge Tovrea truck flashing along on the fast paved highway near Holbrook today and the plodding eight mule team and freight wagon which Ed Ambrose Tovrea the founder of this business drove into Holbrook over a rutted, muddy dirt trail one evening in the year 1881. Edward A. Tovrea was born on a farm in Sparta, Illinois in 1862. In 1871 he went to Wichita, Kansas, where he worked on a cattle ranch and farm until 1879 when he set out with a four mule team for Trinidad, Colorado, where he organized a freighting company and maintained one of the pioneer contract freight hauling operations between Trinidad and Albuquerque. In Arizona he did contract ore freighting from the mines at Jerome to the Santa Fe tracks at Ash Fork. Those were perilous days for freighters or any other travelers to be abroad on the scant network of trails which represented our early day highway system and on several occasions, Ed and his fellow freighters were forced to Of the few U. S. meat processors who maintain their own producing ranches and feed yards, Tourea's is the largest, owning three-quarters of a million acres in three states. The Double-O ranch at Seligman, with a spread of 250,000 acres, has been designated by the Department of Agriculture as the model steer ranch of the U. S. Various views of the ranch are shown here.

The processing plant at Tovrea's has developed into a highly complex industrial institution. The preparing of ground feed is an important phase. Above is shown part of the process from loading feed into wagon, feeding cattle at the troughs and storing ground feed in a silo bin.

defend their lives and cargoes from marauding Apaches. One time in the company of three of his freight outfits a wagon lost a wheel which proceeded to roll from the mountain side where they were to the canyon below. Here was a pretty predicament as the wheel came from the lead wagon and at a place in the trail too narrow to risk turning or backing; in addition they had been seeing fresh Indian signs all day. Ed decided to climb down into the canyon and rescue the wheel under the cover of the other men's guns. He made the descent without incident and harnessing the wheel to his back started the return trip. About halfway up he was fired on and wounded by Apaches concealed on the other side of the canyon. However, his friends opened fire and he kept right on to the top, wagon wheel, wound and all. A good idea of Ed Tovrea's physical prowess can be had by anyone who has tried to lift a heavy oaken wheel from even a much smaller modern day farm wagon. Shortly after he came to Arizona, Ed married the daughter of another freighter, Lillian Richardson, who be came the mother of his five sons. About this time rumors of a gold strike along the Grand Canyon began to draw many adventuresome souls to that area. Ed and his new wife joined the gold seekers for several months and then migrated to Phoenix where he decided to again go into farming and cattle raising, so in 1885 he began homesteading a ranch near Arlington. Ed was a skillful farmer and he prospered until the bottom fell out of the livestock market in 1889. Then cattle prices were so low they wouldn't even pay freight to Los Angeles. About this time a contractor announced the building of a rock and brush dam on the Gila River (site of the present Gillespie Dam). Ed made a deal to supply the construction crew with fresh beef and hired himself out as a labor foreman on the job. After nearly two years of promissory notes and very little cash, Ed saw the contractor go broke and himself without any pay for his cattle or services. Still having cattle to move, Ed transferred his little slaughter house to Gila Bend and also built his own butcher shop. At Gila Bend he soon discovered he did not have enough customers to consume the volume he would like to slaughter. He decided to open a shop some place else and his mind was made up after Cox's famous army stopped off in Gila Bend for a day and cleaned out everything to eat within a radius of five miles, Ed's butcher shop included. So Ed Tovrea moved his butcher shop to Phoenix and operated successfully until 1898 when he sold out and moved to Jerome where his, by this time, proverbial butcher shop was opened in a large tent, no buildings being available. During his stay in Jerome he built the first of that city's water works and served as the Mayor. Selling out his Jerome holdings, in 1900, he moved his family to Bisbee where he formed a partnership with Capt. Mossman and bought out the local butcher shop. Capt. Mossman will be remembered by many as the daredevil captain of the old Arizona Rangers. In 1919, Ed moved to Phoenix where he organized the present company. By his first wife Lillian he had five sons, Ed Tovrea called the O-L brand the oldest in the world. He got the idea from pre-historic Indian hieroglyphics on a rock behind which he once sought pro-

tection in a gun battle with rustlers. In 1891 he

brought in the brand to the Maricopa county courthouse burned on a piece of saddle leather. Neri Osborn, county recorder, carefully noted the recording in "Book 1 of Marks and Brands Records of Maricopa County, June 11th, 1891 at 3:40 P. M."

only two of whom are alive today-Harry, who has retired and lives in San Diego, and Philip E., who is president of the Tovrea Packing Company, Clyde Tovrea, one of the sons, was killed in action while serving as a volunteer with the British navy in 1916; the other two sons, Fred and John, met natural deaths. Ed Tovrea was survived by his second wife, Mrs.

Della Tovrea, when he died in February, 1932.

Phil Tovrea took over the reigns of the company pany by a rather indirect route. Soon after he was mustered out of the army in 1918 he left with his wife for Los Angeles where he worked for several years for several different meat packers in many different capacities from bookkeeper to head cooler salesman and finally general manager, when he was offered a partnership in the company. He was serving as general manager.

His father came over to Los Angeles and convinced him that he should return and plan his future in his home state and with his own people. So Phil returned to Arizona in 1929 as general manager of the company.

As a boy, Phil had been a veritable shadow wherever his father went. He had worked in the slaughtering house, the butcher shops and the ranches. He had been his father's companion on buying trips and on business trips to Chicago and New York City. While in Los Angeles, he had the experience of office work, processing operations, selling and management in one of the nation's most competitive retail markets for any type of commodity. In other words, when Phil Tovrea came to his father's office in Phoenix, he brought with With most unusual equipment in the form of practical experience in the only business he had ever known.

The entire Tovrea set up is unique in the livestock and processing business of the whole United States. Of the few meat processors who maintain their own producing ranches and feed yards, Tovrea is by far the largest. The ranches which the company owns out-right, leases or is interested in, are located in The principal feed lots of Tourea's lie adjacent to the main plant. With a capacity of 30,000 cattle these are largest of kind in the world. Within a radius Of 40 miles of Phoenix there are more cattle fed and finished than in any similar sized area in the world today.

Tovrea's government contracts and private business is of such extent that Tovred's provides a steady and near market for Central Arizona cattlemen. Feed raisers in the Salt River Valley likewise have a close market for their produce. (Kegley photos.) New Mexico, Arizona and California and comprise over three-quarters of a million acres of choice range and farm land. The Double O Ranch, located south of Seligman, embraces over 250,000 acres and has recently been designated by the Department of Agriculture as the model steer ranch of the United States. The Department has located several men on this property who are doing continual experimenting in the growth of natural and imported grasses and browse, in addition to all sorts of work in almost every field of endeavor necessitated in large scale cattle outfits. Just as rapidly as these experiments are concluded they will be made available in the form of printed literature by the Department of Agriculture.

The company owns and operates a series of farms in the region of Phoenix, Buckeye, Yuma and the Imperial Valley. These farms are used for pre-feeding range bred and feed cattle before they are moved into the feed lot, and for producing feed crops. The pen feeding plants maintained by Tovrea's are located in the Imperial Valley, Yuma, Buckeye, Chandler and Phoenix. The principal feed lot lies adjacent to the processing plant in Phoenix and is the largest of its kind in the world, with a capacity for handling 30,000 head of beef cattle at one time. It is a very interesting fact unknown to many people even in Arizona that within a radius of forty miles of Phoenix, there are more cattle fed andfinished than in any other similar sized area in the world today. Each year, in addition to the thousands of cattle produced on the Tovrea ranches, the largest percentage of the beef cattle that pass through the feed yards and plant is purchased from independent livestock producers. The same is true of the enormous quantities of feed used in the fattening and finishing of these cattle in the feed lot. Tovrea's have developed a constant market for the farmers of Central Arizona and the other sections in which their feed lots are located which calls for thousands of tons of grain, hegari, alfalfa and other feed crops indigenous to the southwest.

The government contracts which the company has secured annually for many years have proved to be of untold benefit to the local cattle markets because they have made it possible for Tovrea to become a continuous buyer of cattle during all seasons and have therefore been a major factor in stabilizing and holding at higher levels the livestock prices.

Now with the advent of the war, the people who live in Arizona and Southern California, especially, can be very thankful that they have such a complete meat processing unit in what might be called their own "back yard." With highways and railroads naturally working over time in giving priority to troop and munition shipments, the Southwestern and Pacific areas cannot depend too readily upon shipments into these territories from other sections of the United States. In addition, this enormous meat processing plant will be taxed to its very utmost to provide fresh meat and meat products for the untold numbers of military men and soldiers who will of necessity be concentrated in this section. Being the first and only U. S. Government Inspected plant in Arizona and one of the first meat processing plants in the United States to be awarded U. S. Grading Service, Tovrea's fills every specification required by military buyers who demand the utmost protection in wholesomeness and quality in the meat they feed to Uncle Sam's warriors.

In normal times, Tovrea's products are shipped by truck and rail regularly to all sections of Arizona and parts of Nevada, Southern California and New Mexico and with considerable frequency to many other sections of the United States. By boat, Tovrea's meats have been shipped to Hawaii, the Philippines, China and many other destinations in the Orient as well as to several European countries.

During the past twenty-five years there has been a tremendous shift in the entire economical structure of the livestock industry. Chicago, Kansas City and other middle west points in the so-called "corn belt area" have become decentralized in importance. This has been brought about chiefly by three factors. First, the development of water conservation The processing of beef is a careful and precise operation. In largescale enterprises such as the Tovrea Packing Plant, each step entails the services of experts, requires skilled hands. Strict government inspection necessitates first class products. Speed and cleanliness are essential factors in big beef processing. Beef cattle are driven to the killing floor, where hides are taken off and the beef halved. Then the halves are washed and the carcass covered with cloth.

projects has turned thousands of desert acres almost miraculously into some of the richest farm land with the longest growing seasons and the most diversified crops in the entire country, thus providing an abundance of the finest livestock feeds in almost the center of the livestock producing sections of the United States.

Second, through the efforts of the Federal and State Governments and individual ranchers, the quality of the ranch cattle has been improved by large scale selective breeding, until it ranks among the first Large refrigerator rooms receive the clothed carcasses where beef is inspected and stamped. Tovred's maintains a highly equipped laboratory where technicians further test beef to assure highest quality to consumer. In the beef processing every part of the beef is used. Hides are stored in a huge hide curing room. Other parts of the beef go into various by-products handled by the manufacturing plant. The processing of beef runs as smoothly as an assembly line.

Tovrea trucks are familiar sights on the highways of the west. The firm maintains a fleet of trucks and other motor equipment which travel over two million miles each year.

Refrigerator trucks transport beef from the processing plant to wholesale markets. Tovrea's safety first record is something of which every driver is proud. among large outfits in this nation of ours. Third, but not least, during the past twenty-five years, there has been a decided and heavy migration of the population to the Pacific Coast, which formed a natural and consuming market for the livestock produced, fed, finished and processed in the southwest.

Today, Arizona and western grain finished beef is equal or superior in tender texture and flavor to the same quality of beef produced in any other part of the nation. The term "eastern" or "corn fed" beef is an outmoded descriptive adjective when applied to meats.

The Tovrea processing plant itself has kept completely abreast with the development of the livestock industry in this area and is pro-claimed by unprejudiced technicians to be the most modern to be found anywhere in the United States today.

Years ago, Ed Tovrea built his home next door to the processing plant and almost in the middle of his stock yards and feed pens. Only recently, Phil has completed a magnificent new home in exactly the same location. Many people will wonder why the Tovreas did not build their new residence in one of the ex-clusive subdivisions of the country club sections.

The answer is simple and significant. The very secret of both Ed's and Phil's success has been largely, in addition to a thorough knowledge of the business itself, the manner in which they practically live with the business. Night watchmen in the feed yard will tell you that while Ed was alive, it was not an unusual thing to find him wandering in the wee small hours along one of the many corral fences. The same thing holds true of Phil today. Here in the solitude of night surrounded by what might be called the "tools of their trade" they have had at once both the opportunity and the incentive to wrestle with and solve the problems which continually occur in any large and growing concern. Phil wants his sons, Ed and Phil, Jr. to follow in his footsteps. Fortunately, both of the boys seem to have inherited the Tovrea genius for handling live-stock. They have and are learning the business the "hard way." They have been assigned all sorts of work on the ranches, in the feed yards, the plant and the sales force. At the present time, Edward is serving as a Lieutenant in the Army Air Corps somewhere in the fight-ing zone. Phil Jr., married and the father of a new born baby, is now serving somewhere in Uncle Sam's military force.

"Phil," as he is affectionately called by everyone who knows him, has consistently refused to expand the business by building new plants and taking on new sales territories. Rather, he has invested the profits of the company in allied businesses. The businesses serve to strengthen the operation of the original organization as the spokes of a wheel secure its hub, in addition to creating greater sources for employment and income to the people of this state. Today, the company owns and The Tovrea Packing Plant buys and prepares for market a vast amount of pork and mutton each year. Bacon, smoked ham and sausage are processed at the plant, packed and wrapped and sent to market.

Operates one of the most modern cottonseed oil mills, which in addition supplies a source of the finest kind of vegetable oil from which Tovrea's Shortenings are made, and also provide a dependable and needed by-product for the feeding of cattle in the form of cottonseed meal, cake and cottonseed hull. There is also the new Agricultural Supply Division, which was established to sell farm and ranch supplies of all kinds at an equitable price to the hundreds of farmers and livestock men who regularly deliver their new materials at the Tovrea plant. A new fertilizer manufacturing and composting plant has also been added to the list of allied interests.

As has been pointed out, the company depends to a large extent on a fleet of trucks and other motorized equipment to handle the products of the firm. Officials of Tovrea's are proud of the official Red Cross Emergency First Aid recognition given to it, and an explanation would be of interest to all people The manufacturing plant at Tovrea's maintains a busy schedule, has a variety of products. Cotton seed is treated to get oil, the residue is used for feed. By-products of the packing plant go into the manufacOriginally the Tovrea Packing Plant was a local concern, but the past decade has seen phenomenal expansion in the Tovrea market. Products have been sold to such farflung places as Hawaii and the Philippines.

Interested in the safety on the highway. Three years ago this coming October, Tovrea's was granted this recognition giving all of their trucks the right to carry the Official Red Cross insignia on the truck and the official Red Cross arm band on the sleeves of all the truck personnel. Every salesman and salesman's helper and truck driver employed by the company is required to take and pass the official Red Cross First Aid course. Some of Tovrea's men have become qualified instructors in this work and now in addition to instructing their own men, are rendering valuable service in training civilian defense units. All Tovrea's trucks carry a complete First Aid emergency kit. During the past three years at least, twenty-four human lives have been saved by the treatment rendered through that equipment in highway accidents. Tovrea's men and equipment have figured prominently (Continued on Page Forty-Two) Future of commercial fertilizer. An efficient and far-sighted management has developed at Tovrea's utmost perfection in the many and various functions of the plant, making it as productive as possible. Tourea's maintains a smart looking distri-buting store in Phoenix, has recently built one in Tucson.