By William “Skip” Deegans
Older readers may remember when the Lewisburg’s former True Value building was the Greenbrier Dairy. The dairy was an outgrowth of the Lewisburg Ice Cream Company that was organized in 1916 by a group of Greenbrier County farmers as an outlet for their milk. In the beginning, all of the ice cream was shipped by rail and distributed along the C&O railway route. In 1919, the company opened a plant in Beckley. Their slogan was “From the Green Pastures of Greenbrier.”
In 1936, two Charlestonians, E. M. Johnson and Hugh F. Hutchinson, acquired a substantial interest in the company and expanded by opening distributing plants in Logan and Charleston. In 1942, the company’s name was changed to Greenbrier Dairy Products Co. In 1946, over 600 families in Greenbrier and Monroe Counties were producing milk for the dairy. By 1950, the dairy had 75 trucks and 180 employees. It was the first dairy in West Virginia to sell milk in paper cartons.
Greenbrier Dairy was the largest dairy in West Virginia in 1963 when it was acquired by Beatrice Foods. Beatrice Foods subsequently shut down the Lewisburg operation and sold the building to Ken and Helen Dotson in 1971. The Dotsons opened True Value Hardware the next year.
Photo: The Greenbrier Independent.
Sources: The Raleigh Register, Beckley Post-Herald, The Mountain Messenger.
