Artist Stan Russon came out of retirement to create the depiction of the Lehi Sugar Factory for a 28 by 34 plaque memorializing the historic site.

His graphite etching is detailed with minute cars of the era parked alongside the building with tiny trees and shrubbery decorating the landscape.

The dedication of the memorial site will be on April 26 at 4 p.m. at the Sugar Factory site, 850 E. 850 South, Lehi. The public is invited to attend.

There will be a short program with Lehi Stake President Stan Smith giving the dedicatory prayer.

Sponsored by the Sons of the Utah Pioneers, Lehi Chapter, and spearheaded by its President DeVere Fowler, Bluebell Camp DUP, Lehi CIA, Gerber Construction, Thomas J. Peck and Sons, Stan Russon, Robert Lott, Howard and LaRae Ault, Carl Mellor, Nova Color Inc., Jack B. Parsons, Lehi Block, Holcim Inc., and the Lehi Historical Preservation Commission also contributed to the project.

"Dee has just taken it and run with it," CIA historian Dona Anderson said.

Russon was 18 years old when he saw the building demolished. The only remaining structure is what was once the Sugar Factory warehouse, some open storage bins, and the smokestack that today is a cell phone tower.

With a few existing photos of the building and his memories of the site, Russon drew a black and white pen and ink with graphite pencil picture of the factory as it was during its glory days of peak production.

He spent two-and-a-half days etching the detailed drawing.

"Well, I better say three days; I had to do a revision on it," Russon said.

A retired architect illustrator, 10 years has passed since he had done a work.

"It was just as if I hadn't stopped," he said.

The success of the factory had a dramatic effect on Lehi's financial well being according to city historian Richard Van Wagoner. The factory was built in 1891 with President Wilford Woodruff attending the dedication ceremony. President George Q. Cannon gave the dedicatory prayer.

"Until Micron established its Lehi Division during the late 1990s, no single business provided greater financial benefits to the local economy than the sugar factory," Van Wagoner is recorded in writing on the prepared plaque.

The beginning of economic industry began however with the Sugar Factory. From 1890-1896, 30 new businesses were started in Lehi as a direct result of the factory's success, and from 1899-1900 the factory doubled its size.

"Lehi was the place to be," Fowler said of that era. "Micron came along and we got another big boost."

Van Wagoner said the demise of the Sugar Beet factory was ultimately caused by two beet maladies, nematodes (round worms) and "curly top" from white fly infection; additionally farmers did not plant sufficient acreage in the area to sustain the factory and it closed after the 1924 campaign.

"There's quite a few men that worked there, but a lot of them are deceased," Dona Anderson said.

"As far as my experience, when we were teenagers Morrie Clark was the supervisor of the warehouse and hired teenagers to move sugar bags," Lehi resident Bruce Webb said. "I didn't work for him. Many, many teenagers that my age did." Instead he hoed and thinned beets.

"Back in our day, they had to thin beets by hand," he said. "They would hire kids on a beet crew."

The work lasted two weeks in early May. Webb no longer hoes beets but is a BYU "soil" scientist instead. He went into agronomy, the study of soil, because of his experience with beet farming as a youth.

Mel Anderson was a route driver and delivered beet sugar to stores.

"I think it's a good thing that we can have something to remind us of the struggles of our forefathers and of their industry," Anderson said.

Webb concurred.

"The sugar beet industry was key in the development of Lehi so I'm very much in favor of them having something to help remember the importance of that industry most of the old Lehi families were affected significanlty by that industry," he said.

"It needs to be done before development comes in and the Sugar Factory is gone and we don't have any way to remember what went on there so I'm pleased."