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DELAWARE PUBLIC ARCHIVES/JACKSON AND SHARP COLLECTION February 23, 2021
Jackson and Sharp Company, according to an article in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, was an American railroad car manufacturer and shipbuilder in Wilmington in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
“The company was founded in 1863 by Job H. Jackson (b. 1833), a tinsmith and retail merchant, and Jacob F. Sharp (b. 1815), a carpenter who had worked for rail car manufacturers and shipbuilders. Jackson and Sharp built a fabrication plant, called the Delaware Car Works, near the mouth of Brandywine Creek. By 1880 the plant produced 400 passenger cars per year. Through facility expansions on the 12-acre site, the capacity grew to 75 cars, with about 1,000 employees in the late 1880s. At that time it was considered to be the largest rolling stock plant in the Americas. Clients included Great Western Railroad (Illinois), South Side Elevated Railroad (Chicago), Denver and Rio Grande Railway, King
In January, 1947, fruit growers in the Grand Valley were preparing to ship by rail freshly harvested peaches from Palisade to locations around the country.
There werenât any fresh peaches in January, of course. That fruit wouldnât be ready to harvest for another eight or nine months.
But another critical commodity was being harvested that winter and shipped to Grand Junction in preparation for the peach harvest to come.
Ice.
When harvest time arrived, ice-cooled railroad cars called reefers, âwere pre-iced in Grand Junction to ensure the fruit was cooled when loaded into the car,â wrote Matt Darling in his book âThe History of Railroads in Palisade, Colorado.â The book was published by the Palisade Historical Society and was released late last year.