The Lehi factory of the Utah Sugar Company, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, held a pre-eminent place among early sugar mills in America as the first sugar-beet factory in the Mountain West, the first to use beets grown by irrigation, the first to use American-made machinery, the first to use the osmoses process to reprocess molasses, the first to build auxiliary cutting stations, and the first established as part of a great social and religious movement. Built in 1891, it completed its first sugar strike on October 15 of that year, and during that first growing season 565 farmers planted 1500 acres of sugar beets that were processed into 12,500 100-pound bags of sugar. Its success dramatically improved Lehi's financial well-being, and between 1890 and 1896 nearly thirty new businesses appeared. Many local men gained valuable experience there, moved to other areas, and helped establish additional factories in Utah and Idaho. The Utah Sugar Company later became the Utah and Idaho Sugar Company and then the U and I Sugar Company. In 1899 and 1900 the factory doubled in size, and during World War I a huge fourteen-million-pound-capacity warehouse and a 184-foot-high smokestack were completed, both still standing in 2008. The factory's decline was ultimately caused by two beet maladies, nematodes and curly top from white fly infection. Farmers in the area did not plant enough acreage to sustain it, and it closed after the 1924 campaign, although beets continued to be grown locally and processed at other factories until the 1960s. Its machinery was shipped to new factories elsewhere, and in 1939 the main buildings were demolished. Many of the bricks were used to construct the Joseph Smith Memorial Building on the BYU Campus and the Lehi First Ward Chapel. The large sugar warehouse continuously stored sugar from 1914 until the late 1960s. The Utah and Idaho Sugar Company sold the property in 1979 to the Thomas Peck and Sons Trucking Company, and in 1996 the smokestack was remodeled into a cell phone antenna tower. Until Micron established its Lehi Division during the late 1990s, no single business provided greater financial benefits to the local economy than the sugar factory.