From the time I was an early grade schooler, I can remember having to get up early mornings before school to help Dad load hogs to be hauled to Peoria. In the summer, if I wasn't too tired, I would ride to Peoria with him. The stockyards was a very busy place with dozens of trucks jockeying for chutes to unload cattle, hogs, and sheep. We often had to wait a few minutes before backing up to the chute/pen and unloading our hogs. Then we would report in to the yard office with our farm info, pen number, and the commission firm we wanted to handle our sale. We always used IPLA ( Interstate Producers Livestock Association - a farmer owned Co-op). Another popular commission firm was "the Dick Herm Firm." Either Dick Herm or Dewey Christopherson would give the stockyards report on the WMBD radio noon farm show.
There was a large office building on site that had a restaurant in the lower level for the employees, farmers, and truckers. It was acceptable to wear your livestock clothes and boots in there, so sometimes Dad would stop for breakfast before heading back home. Stockyards Farm Supply and Tractor Supply stores were located just outside of the gates, so we often would stop to pick up supplies on our way home.
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After I got my drivers license, I started taking turns hauling the loads to the stockyards. Our truck held 30 - 34 head, depending on weight (which in those days was 210 to 220 lbs.). We usually loaded at 6:00 A.M. and got to Peoria around 7:00 A.M. Traffic was light then, but I did enjoy driving down Washington Street, downtown Peoria, with a load of smelly, squealing hogs between the Caterpillar Headquarters and their parking deck with the executives in suits and dresses waiting to cross the street!
Since winter storms usually came out of the west, we would watch the weather and when a snowstorm moved into Iowa, we would plan on hauling hogs the next morning. With Iowa shut down, the packers would bid up the Peoria hogs and we could catch a $2 higher market for braving the incoming snowstorm.
Established in 1874, the Peoria Union Stockyards eventually became one of the largest "livestock hotels" in the country. Originally, the idea was to feed grain mash byproducts from the local distilleries to cattle, but soon it became a livestock market. The capacity as a feedlot was 28,000 head of cattle. Peoria was once known as the "whiskey capital of the world". Even while I was growing up, the Hiram Walkers distillery (now ADM ethanol plant) was the largest distillery in the world. The stockyards were built along the river and along the railroad tracks. In the early days livestock would come in by rail, barge, or horse-drawn wagon. Soon, packing plants sprang up around it, and at the packing prime in the 30's up to 1000 people were employed by the yards and the packing plants. Peoria became the 6th largest hog market in the nation, with 11,400 hogs handled on its biggest day. The biggest year for sheep was 79,000 head. In the mid '70's, the stockyards handled 1.3 million head of livestock per year. When I was hauling, they typically handled 2000 cattle and 7000 hogs per day.
But the packing plants were closing, consolidating, and moving to rural areas. By the mid '80's, farmers were shipping hogs direct to the packers and pooling semi trailer loads, bypassing Peoria. Farms got bigger and bigger with fewer small farms. The Stockyards downsized several times, and recently were just handling numbers in the hundreds. It was one of the last remaining stockyards in the Midwest.
The week before Christmas, the stockyards shut down for good. It is no more.
The Peoria Union Stockyards are now just a part of history.
And they brought their cattle unto Joseph: and Joseph gave them bread in exchange for horses, and for the flocks, and for the cattle of the herds, and for the asses: and he fed them with bread for all their cattle for that year.
Genesis 47:17
