KOMO News
About once a week, the Museum staff submits an article to KOMO News’ Kent Community site on our Museum events, programs and exhibits. Sometimes our posts also reach other cities’ community sites, such as Renton, Auburn and Des Moines.
Visit Kent KOMO and look for “Kent Museum” in the headlines to read our stories!
Kent Magazine
Unfortunately, due to the state of the economy, the Kent Magazine is on hiatus until further notice. Our last Kent History article to appear in the magazine was April 2011:
The Kent Historical Museum’s collection includes several artifacts and photos related to the Carnation Milk Company, which got its start in Kent in 1899. The original factory was located at the corner of First and Meeker downtown.
Originally called the Pacific Coast Condensed Milk Company, the world-known seller of evaporated milk and other products, such as Instant Breakfast and Carnation Corn Flakes, was started by Elbridge A. Stuart. Later in his life, Stuart wrote of the beginning of his company and the town it started in: “We located a small plant at Kent, Washington which had been established for the processing of sweetened condensed milk.”
That plant belonged to the Washington Condensed Milk Company, which had failed a year and a half after it began. Stuart and his Pacific Coast Condensed Milk Company bought the plant and the equipment “for the sum of $5000… We had to reassemble the machinery and make certain additions so as to adapt it to the processing of evaporated milk.”
Stuart’s company had a new way of condensing milk; instead of using the old method of adding sugar as a preservative, the Pacific Coast Company used high heat to sterilize the milk. Stuart’s writing reveals the exact date his company began operation: “On the 6th of September 1899, we received about 5800 pounds of fluid milk which we processed into 55 cases of evaporated milk.”
In 1901 Stuart changed the company’s name to the Carnation Evaporated Milk Company, and by the 1920s the company had started its own dairy farm and moved much of its operations near the town of Tolt, Washington. The town was renamed Carnation in 1951.
One Carnation item in the Museum’s archives is a souvenir postcard from 1909. The front includes Carnation’s famous slogan, “From contented cows,” explaining, “Green grass year ‘round on the North Pacific Coast.”
The Museum also has several other souvenir postcards, bookmarks, and recipe books distributed by Carnation, as well as photos of the company’s buildings and workers in the early 20th century.
