Charles “Carl” Julius Timm and his family ran Veneer & Box Works, pictured right near the Jackson Street Bridge for  45 years. They made boxes and crates for berries.

Owner Charles Timm, left, and brother in-law and millworker Frank Lieskow stand in the saw room. The wood hanging above used for boxes is basswood.

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Charles “Carl” Julius Timm and his family ran Veneer & Box Works, pictured right near the Jackson Street Bridge for  45 years. They made boxes and crates for berries.

Following the recent announcement that Ripon’s J.M. Smucker’s Co. will be shuttering its plant at the end of 2022, the Ripon Historical Society began reflecting about the years that a local fruit and berry industry flourished here.

Berry picking seasons start in late June and early July most years.

From approximately 1860 to 1928, Ripon was a great berry- and fruit-growing center that included harvesting, packing and shipping to outside markets.

Fresh strawberries, raspberries and cherries were so popular that Charles “Carl” Julius Timm (1854-1930), an enterprising German immigrant who became a Ripon resident, started a business manufacturing berry boxes to accommodate the needed packaging for transporting fruit to local and far away destinations.

The Timm box and crate manufacturing company, Ripon Veneer and Box Works, was located in a large building along Ripon’s Gothic Mill Pond next to the Jackson Street Bridge.

In fact, prior to this venture in 1875, Timm, along with his family, built and owned a grain grist mill in this same spot.

The area was ideal for manufacturing as it had both water and railroad access.

Ripon berry growers had been purchasing wooden boxes and crates at much higher prices to package and ship their harvests to Minneapolis and Chicago, so Timm knew that he could create similar box and crate products cheaper, locally.

An instant local demand for Timm’s boxes and crates made his box and crate business prosper for 45 years.

Berry boxes and crates were a seasonal business requiring manufacturing during winter months to be ready for harvest season.

Timm employed many of his family members, including a brother in-law. Younger Timm family members attended Ripon High School and worked in the family’s factory after their classes all-winter long.

At peak, Ripon was shipping railroad cars filled with cherries, strawberries, gooseberries and raspberries. Growers brought their own wagonloads of berries into town from a 2-mile radius around Ripon to be crated and shipped.

Owner Charles Timm, left, and brother in-law and millworker Frank Lieskow stand in the saw room. The wood hanging above used for boxes is basswood.

As this industry swelled, it even led to the forming of a Ripon Berry Growers’ Association to manage and chart seasonal production and shipping according to demand.

In the late 1920s and 1930s, berry growing became less popular as farms in Ripon turned to larger cash crops to support their families.

Large crops produced more income per acre, and farmers only grew berries as seasonal fruit for their own family’s consumption.

As the local Ripon berry business industry waned, the Timms’ manufacturing building was closed and razed in 1927.

The Timm factory’s area of land is now an open green space known as “Horner’s Park.”

The popular Prellwitz Family Farm outside of Ripon in nearby Nepeuskin, which now is closed, once grew acres of strawberries that were sold in cardboard trays.

Today, seasonal berries are provided to consumers via local grocery stores such as Ripon’s Webster’s Marketplace.

These include blueberries, raspberries and strawberries and more that are packaged in pre-manufactured plastic containers (some of which are made of recyclable materials.)

The Ripon Historical Society is the oldest continually operating historical society in Wisconsin. It is open Fridays and Saturdays 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

For more information follow us at Facebook/riponhistory or www.riponhistory.org

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