They opened their doors in May of 1948, but the legacy of Farmers Packing of Kinnear goes back a lot further. Floyd and Eleanor Westlake opened the business after meeting in Golden, Colorado, in 1942.
“Between 1947 until we closed, 70 years in all, we processed 30,000 beef and another 30,000 hogs,” their son and final owner Bruce Westlake said.
“They met at church,” Bruce said. “He was dating her sister.”
Floyd was a welder, learning the trade in Torrington, and teaching welding before moving to Golden to work for Remington Arms. After a short stint in Colorado, Floyd enlisted in the United States Army and served with distinction in the South Pacific as a welder with the 13th Army Air Force.
Floyd came from a big family with brothers Clinton and Kenneth and sisters Thelma, Martha, and Mary.
Floyd’s grandfather, Henry Westlake, was a meat cutter in Murdock, Nebraska, a small town south of Lincoln in the early days of the 20th century.
Henry started his adult life as a farmer, but was soon processing beef, pork, and lamb. His son, Floyd’s father, Raymond, was born in 1890 and soon joined his father processing meat. Raymond eventually took over the operation with his brother Fred.
“One day, grandpa came in and told his brother Fred, ‘You’re either buying or selling,’” Bruce said. “Fred bought, grandpa went back to farming.”
The farming operation in Nebraska thrived until the Great Depression hit in 1929.
“He farmed with horses,” Bruce said. “They didn’t require the work that equipment did.”
Raymond moved his family from Murdock to Minatare, a town in the Nebraska Panhandle, but things just weren’t right. Raymond suffered from depression.
Raymond started moving his family often, trying to find whatever was missing in his life.
“Dad changed schools six times one year,” Bruce said. “Grandpa was looking for something.”
The Westlakes were members of the Church of the Nazarene in Torrington.
“Raymond was sick of traveling,” Bruce said. “He moved to Nampa, Idaho. The kids all had the measles. The school sent out a truancy officer because the kids weren’t in school. It made him mad. He took the family back to Scottsbluff.”
That’s where Floyd lived when he began taking welding classes in nearby Torrington. Then, Germany and Japan interrupted his plans.
Here are excerpts from a letter Floyd Westlake wrote to his father Raymond with just a few months remaining in the war in the Pacific.
May 6, 1945
Dear Dad,
“I received your letter of May 5 yesterday. I was awfully glad to hear from you but was taken back a step when I found out about you being sick. You were all getting along so nice there and I hate to see anything upset the start you and Mom had made there.
But if we trust God, He will take care of us and everything will work out for the best. I certainly hope you’re feeling O.K. again or at least better.
I haven’t got mama’s letter yet but it will probably be in tomorrow’s mail. I sure hope it gets here then. …if she had in a day or two. If she don’t come all right soon I’ll sure have Mom write Dr. Lewis and have him do something for her.
Gee, you have lots to do now when you get home. You’ll be busy for a long while. But a woman is like that I guess.
I miss the work I did on the farm. It kept me going and I liked the work all right. The only thing I didn’t like was living with other people. I didn’t feel at home. That’s the real thing I like about being at my folks’ place, my home.
I’d sure like to buy some place of my own to live with you. It would be a good thing that they finally pulled the Germans out of the war and got the good out of it.
It doesn’t seem as long as it has been, as long as we’re doing the same old things day after day.
I don’t know any of the fellows who came to this outfit after I was taken to the 56th. I only know a half dozen or so fellows who were in England with me. Some of them are still in the company though.”
The letter continued.
“I’ve done a lot of traveling since I’ve been in the Army. Been in some parts of this world a fellow never even dreams of seeing. But it’s only the things a fellow sees that are worth anything, not the positions he’s been in or what he’s done for himself. That’s what I think anyway.”
When Floyd returned home from the South Pacific, he and Eleanor took jobs working on the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam.
While Floyd was away fighting the Japanese, Clint and Kenneth took a homestead near Morton Lake and the old ghost town of Tipperary.
Floyd and Eleanor came to Fremont County in 1946 or early 1947.
Floyd found a construction job with Midvale Irrigation, building the tunnel that gives Tunnel Hill Road its name.
Floyd was planning on following construction jobs, and there were many of them in the post-war years, but life sometimes changes things.
“They brought in a ripper off a cat,” Bruce said. “They set it on four 55-gallon drums. Dad was welding under the ripper when it crushed the barrels. It broke his back.”
Floyd had $5000 saved that he earned while in the Army making custom jewelry boxes, knives, pen and pencil sets, and other handcrafted artwork from scrap copper, spent shell casings, and the glass from downed B-17s and P-38s.
Raymond was processing meat in a barn at Kinnear, taking the sides of beef, lamb, and pork to Riverton to hang at Mother Zero Cold Storage in Riverton, then taking it back to Kinnear to cut and package it.
“They didn’t work out very well,” Bruce said.
In 1947, Bruce invested his 5,000 dollars into constructing a new processing plant on the west end of Kinnear. He worked with his father, Raymond.
“The rest is history,” Bruce said.
In 1946, Raymond tried to set up a packing plant in Riverton, where he had a couple of lots near the Teepee Gas Station on South Federal. A man named Cunningham owned it.
“Dad looked at the refrigeration unit at the station,” Bruce said. “He didn’t want it. Cunningham’s wife ran the roller-skating rink across the street.”
Another issue came with the banks in Riverton.
“The banks wouldn’t give him or grandpa the time of day,” Bruce said. “They ended up going to Lander where the banks were willing to work with them. We banked in Lander ever since.”
They returned to the Kinnear location.
“I’m going to do what I want to do,” Bruce said of his father.
The original facility was 30×30 feet with a kill floor. They added a cooler and the lard room later.
“They brought the bank out to look at it,” Bruce said. “The bank was impressed.”
They found a good used cooler for the curing room.
“It must be a hundred years old today,” Bruce said.
Floyd and Evelyn had two sons, Bruce and Bryce.
In 1966, Bruce took over the slaughtering operation.
Bruce and Bryce entered the family business as meat cutters and co-operated Farmers Packing for a while.
The two sons had specific jobs: Bryce processed sheep and skinned wild game. During hunting season from September to November, he was a very busy kid.
Bryce became a renowned auctioneer and still operates Bryce’s Sausage Kitchen in Pavillion.
Farmers Packing remained a Westlake family business over the years.
Raymond operated the packing plant from 1947 to 1959.
In 1959, Floyd and Eleanor ran the business, working together until 1988.
In 1988, Bruce and Bryce owned Farmers Packing together. Bryce left the business in 1992.
From 1992 until Farmers Packing closed for good in 2017, it was Bruce and Evelyn five days a week, with special arrangements to meet people on Saturday if needed.
Challice Whitlock purchased Farmers Packing in 2017. He uses the facility to store equipment in his horse ranching and breaking business. The corrals that once held cattle, sheep and hogs now keep horses.
Bruce wasn’t quite finished with the meatpacking business.
He entered into a partnership with Beau Sheets, Joey Dickinson, Jerome Hutchison, and Mike Bailey, building Genuine Meats on the top of Airport Hill, just a couple of miles west of Riverton. The partnership ended and the business was sold.
Bruce continued as a consultant to Hans and Kim Hummel at Hi Mountain Seasons when they opened a jerky plant a few years ago. He continues to consult with Central Wyoming College President Brad Tyndall and the CWC meat processing facility.
For three generations, farmers and ranchers throughout Fremont County hauled cattle, beef, and hogs to Kinnear to be processed by the Westlake Family.
The quality was exceptional, and people from over the Wind River Mountains to Pinedale and on the other side of the Wind River Canyon in Thermopolis often bought their animals from Kinnear for that special touch.
In the early years, Raymond and Floyd processed hundreds of deer, elk, moose, and antelope each fall, but USDA regulations eventually ended the wild game processing portion of their business. They quit processing wild game in 1975.
Other USDA regulations led to the closing of the facility.
Genuine Meats looked at taking over Farmers Packing, but regulations required so many changes, upgrades, and new standards to be met that the cost became prohibitive.
“It cost more to remodel the building than it would have to tear it down and start from scratch,” Bruce said.
The Westlake operation was more than a business; it became an integral part of the Morton, Kinnear, and Pavillion communities and extended much farther.
For ham, bacon, sausage, and perfectly trimmed steaks and roasts, it was hard to beat.