Hershey - sugar town

In 1917, chocolate pioneer Milton Hershey came to Cuba for sugar to supply his US chocolate company, and opened a factory here. He bought several sugar mills, established a town of 180 homes on this spot 40 miles east of Havana (the remains are shown in this image), and built a golf course, a sports field and an electric railway that ran from the Bay of Havana at Casablanca to the port of Matanzas 52 miles to the east. His Cuban sugar business supplied his chocolate empire, sent molasses to the rum factory up the road, and sold sugar to Coca-Cola.

Hershey would ride a sugar boom created by the devastation of beet fields in Europe during the first world war, that would become known as Cuba’s “Dance of the Millions”. It saw the price of sugar more than double in two months: Cuba’s total crop was worth $455m in 1919, and a cool $1bn in 1920. But oversupply hit hard in 1921, and in 1946, Hershey’s sold its Cuba business.

The PiP shows an old view of the factory town and the sugar mill. Still remaining are the one factory building left of the left chimney (next images) and the large railway workshop to the right.