Since we were in the neighborhood of the Ferguson Farm last month — now the future site of the Aquatic Center, off of Maple Avenue — why not track down the location of the former Ferguson Cannery? Not so easy. It took an animated discussion between both Ferguson brothers to pin it down.
As teenagers, the brothers along with their older sister, Sharon, worked summers at the cannery started by their grandparents, Cecil and Clara, in 1914. According to their uncle Emory’s account in River Reflections, Part II: “the original cannery was a lean-to, consisting of three sides … It had a tarpaper roof, a dirt floor, one ten-horsepower steam boiler, and one steam engine.”
The homegrown company seems to have come into its own with the renewed popularity of Victory Gardens during World War II. Called a “custom cannery,” it meant that the customer brought the food already prepared to the plant for packing. The Ferguson Cannery ran several large ads in the Tribune promoting the Victory Garden business during the early 1940s.
With the end of the war, the commercial canning business, Ferg’s Finer Foods, expanded with new products and retail outlets. Mountainous displays of canned goods were a popular point-of-purchase style in food stores well into the 1950s. Ferg’s Finer Foods topped their displays with a small sailboat, one of Bruce’s souvenirs from those days.
The company wasn’t incorporated until 1954 with the boys’ father Burdette, Uncle Emery, Aunt Madeline, and grandparents as officers. Clara died in 1961, but Cecil, E. C. Ferguson’s only son, lived to see the production of “Puget Sound Air” — yes, canned air — a novelty item sold at the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle. Cecil, the cannery founder who preferred working barefoot, died in November 1964.
The canning industry by this time was ripe picking for manufacturers influencing the regulations. The investment required to continue did not pencil out, and operations ended in 1971.
Gary, Bruce, and their sister Sharon were free to look for another line of work.
About the THEN photograph: Started in 1914 by Cecil and Clara Ferguson, the plant was expanded in the 1920s. But it was not until the war years of the 1930s that the company hit its stride as a “custom cannery” where Victory Gardeners had their produce safely canned for winter use. The commercial canning operation was known as “Ferg’s Finer Foods” throughout the Pacific Northwest. A tongue-in-cheek product of “Puget Sound Air” was created 50 years ago for Seattle’s World Fair. An inspired farewell to an era as the company ended operations in 1971.
About the NOW photograph: Gary and Bruce outside the FOE Hall discussing where the original site of the cannery was located. The Fraternal Order of the Eagles renovated the old cannery warehouse of their use after selling their historic home at 801-807 First Street.
Published in the Snohomish County Tribune, May 16, 2012.
Bruce Fergusonsays:
May 20, 2012 at 5:54 pm Edit
People were paid 8 cents per pound for blackberries, 12 cents for raspberries. Picking “flats” were provided, as seen on berry porch with Scoop and my dad.   Flats were stamped ” Ferguson Frozen Foods.”  Berries were washed and taken to Everett Cold Storage each night.