Gunnison Valley’s legacy includes major institutions in industry, health care, community life, and entertainment. The sugar industry began in 1901 when Bishop C.A. Madsen offered a prize for beet-growing, leading farmers to raise beets that were first shipped to Lehi and later to Elsinore for processing. After Madsen urged support for a local factory in 1904, a sugar manufacturing plant was eventually completed in Centerfield in 1919 as the Gunnison Sugar Factory. William Wrigley Jr. bought it in 1924 to supply sugar for his chewing gum factory in Chicago, and its payroll and payments to growers brought broad prosperity. U and I Sugar Company acquired the factory in 1940 and operated it until its closure in 1966, while its whistle and burnt sugar give-aways remained strong memories for residents. Health care also developed early, from a doctor at Fort Gunnison between 1865 and 1869 to Dr. J.A Hagan’s practice beginning in 1903 and Dr. G. Stanford Rees’s in 1932. In 1940, Rees opened Sanpete County’s first hospital in a remodeled building with living quarters, office space, and eleven beds, run by Rees, his wife, and two nurses. In 1949, the Rees family sold the hospital to valley communities for one dollar, and it continued as a community-operated hospital; Dr. Lamar H. Stewart joined the valley in 1955, and Rees and Stewart guided construction of a new hospital between 1968 and 1970. Community life centered as well on the Wistaria Café, established in 1925 as the Kozi Inn and renamed in 1926, where owners Aymer and Elva Peterson operated it for 33 years as a gathering place for clubs, celebrations, decisions, and friendships. Entertainment and civic activity also found a home in the Casino theatre, which opened on January 13, 1913, for Gunnison’s first movie, served as a civic auditorium, was renamed the Star in 1936 after remodeling, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987, and was renamed the Casino Star in 2004 during major restoration.