With the establishment of the stockyards, meat buyers quickly gathered in South St. Paul, and by 1897 Armour had buyers there purchasing cattle, hogs, and sheep for shipment to Chicago for processing. Although the St. Paul Union Stockyards offered Armour land and financing to build a plant, the company declined at first, even as the nearby Swift and Company plant was already operating. In 1915, after the start of World War I, subsidies, free land, and the attraction of an established public livestock market provided the final incentive, and construction began two years later with hundreds of local residents employed. When Armour and Company began operations on a 47 acre site on the west bank of the Mississippi River in 1919, it was hailed by the national press as the most modern meat processing plant in the world. The six-story, 14 million dollar complex covered 1.6 million square feet, included 22 buildings, extended more than half a mile along the river, and was the largest industrial plant in the Twin Cities. Its power plant had nine steam boilers for heat and hot water, 450,000 square feet were refrigerated, and four wells from 890 to 1,000 feet deep supplied water in an annual amount equal to that used by a city of 80,000 people. The plant opened in December 1919 with about 2,000 employees, and recruitment in Europe brought an initial labor force representing about 20 ethnic groups in the city. As operations grew, the community swelled to more than 20,000 at its peak, and in 1919 Armour established its own branch of the St. Paul Public Library to encourage continued education for employees while new immigrants were also encouraged to become naturalized citizens. At capacity, the plant processed 700 hogs an hour during an eight-hour shift, along with 180 cattle and 1,000 calves and sheep, while daily inspections were carried out by the United States Department of Agricultural (USDA). Twenty-one railroad spur lines served the site, allowing finished products to move quickly to customers. Armour at one time operated 33 meat packing plants in the United States and employed 60,000 people, and the South St. Paul plant was the largest. Many of its products were shipped around the world, especially during the war years to aid U.S. and allied forces. At peak operation, the plant employed nearly 4,000 people, had an annual payroll of 26 million dollars, and paid more than 260,000 dollars yearly in taxes. Labor-management disputes occurred during the plant's life, and in 1948 the governor sent the Minnesota National Guard to the site during a 10-week strike. Major floods in the 1950s and 1960s halted production until a permanent flood wall was built in 1965. After Armour and Company was acquired by the Greyhound Corp. and executive offices moved from Chicago to Phoenix, the aging buildings and obsolete equipment contributed to the plant's closure in 1979. The city of South St. Paul bought the vacated plant in 1989 from a local real estate firm, and the buildings were demolished the following year at a cost of 2.8 million dollars. The site is now part of Bridge Point, a commercial-industrial development.