Rich History

In January of 1925, the people of West Point, Utah formed a canning company and built a beautiful red brick factory.

By August 1925, the cannery went into operation with 63 people peeling and canning tomatoes.

Some years later, Smith’s Canning Company bought the factory and ran it until the 1950s.

It was located at the site of the Stanley Wise farm—at approximately 3100 W. 300 N. in West Point, Utah.

In 2015, the owners of Eden’s Blacksmith Village and Sunnyfield Farm (Sunnyfield) learned that this lovely old industrial cannery was about to be demolished.

Instead, Sunnyfield made the decision to disassemble the building and rebuild it here at Blacksmith Village, located west of Eden Park.

Quotes at the time indicated that it would have cost $20,000 to demolish the building. Instead, Sunnyfield invested approximately $200,000 to take the cannery down one piece at a time.

Every brick, post, beam, truss, roof and floor component waited in storage until 2022 when the disassembled cannery pieces were brought to Eden to save this piece of Utah history.

Approximately 80,000 original bricks and about 80,000 pounds of reclaimed wood were saved and have been used in the cannery reconstruction effort.

The acquisition of this historic cannery was very serendipitous because canneries were often built close to farms so that the foods could be canned at the point of maximum freshness.

The re-build next to Sunnyfield Farm is well on its way with a planned completion date of November 2023.

The original West Point cannery design was a simple brick construction with walls, four bricks deep and a wooden post/beam/truss/floor/ceiling system.

This historic building technique did not meet modern standards, including seismic and other code requirements so the brick walls were replaced with cinderblock and the original bricks were added on the exterior and interior of the building creating 19-inch thick walls!

We also replaced some of the original load-bearing wooden beams with much stronger steel I-beams to create a free-span design. However, the original reclaimed wood has been used throughout the reconstructed building.

This project will give this old building a new life in a new location.