If you always lived in the city and bought meat at a supermarket just as you needed it, or if you didn't grow up in the country before large home freezers became commonplace, you might not know about locker plants.
Farmers usually got their meat by butchering their own livestock. The earliest preservation methods included things like salting, drying, smoking, packing in lard, etc. When mechanical refrigeration came along, it was clearly a better method for preserving meat but many farmers didn't have electric power, and large freezers were generally too expensive and complicated for the average homeowner.
Many grocers and butchers operated freezers with individual, lockable storage bins that could be rented. Farmers could slaughter an animal, cut up and package the meat, and then store it in a locker and pick up what they needed on trips to the store. Sometimes a couple of families in town might go together and buy an animal and have it slaughtered, and then rent lockers to store it.
The locker plants that I was familiar with as a boy didn't do slaughtering on site; you slaughtered your cow or steer or pig, processed the meat, and took it to the locker plant, or you could take your animal to a fellow who did custom butchering, and he'd do the whole job for a fee. This business did the whole thing on site. The crate-like wooden structure is the chute where they killed the animals, and the gallows-like beam is where they'd hang them up by their hind legs to bleed and gut them.
Oh. Sorry. I didn't realize you were snacking on a burger while you viewed the site.
Noble County was organized in 1836. The present courthouse was designed by E.O. Fallis & Co. and cost $101,604. It was completed in 1889.
. The unusual clock faces are part of the original design; they're shown in a construction photograph hanging in one of the courthouse hallways.
The building has been updated to accommodate present-day needs. The work was done with sensitivity to its historic character, and maintenance is impeccable. It appears to be in beautiful condition.
Return to urbanindiana.com Index