Mushroom mine memorial a mystery
Someone cared enough about Ira Yoder, the founder of the former Butler County Mushroom Farm in Winfield Township, to have a bronze plaque dedicated to his memory.
Now, the plaque, which also celebrates a 56-year anniversary of some kind, rests in storage at the Winfield Township building after being moved from Roebling Park in Saxonburg.
Saxonburg Borough Council voted at its March meeting to approve moving the Ira Yoder/mushroom mine memorial from Roebling Park to Winfield Township, where the mine was located.
But nobody knows the history on what appears to be the double memorial.
A plaque memorializes Ira Yoder, who founded the mushroom-growing business in 1937 with his brother, Menno.
“Difficulties are a challenge to men of determination,” is the quote on the impressive bronze plaque, which was “presented by the employees of Butler County Mushroom Farm” on Dec. 17, 1954.
The plaque is set into a large concrete memorial that reads “1937” on its top left corner, and “1993” on the right, with “56 years” in between, along with the words “Ira D. Yoder memorial.”
Fred Caesar, volunteer curator at Saxonburg Museum, said while the museum has some artifacts from the mushroom mine and old photos of employees working there, no paperwork exists on the memorial.
He has no idea when or why the memorial arrived in Saxonburg, and photos of the area where it stood in Roebling Park before 2003 do not show the memorial.
Caesar worked extensively with borough officials on trying to trace the origins of the memorial or its placement in Roebling Park, all to no avail.
“It’s one of those things,” Caesar said. “You kind of scratch your head and say ‘Where did it come from? Why is it there?’”
Matt Klabnik, a longtime Winfield Township supervisor, also knows little about the memorial.
He said supervisors plan to place it in the park adjacent to the township building along Brose Road, as the mushroom mine was a large employer in the township in past decades and is an important part of the municipality’s history.
Klabnik said township officials soon will kick off their park master plan process, and the rededication of the memorial could be a part of that process if more is discovered on its origin or movements.
“It’s a mystery,” Klabnik said, “but isn’t a mystery exciting?”
Dan Lucovich was president of Creekside Mushrooms in Worthington when it closed in 2013.
He said the Butler County Mushroom Farm and offices created in 1937 in a former limestone mine in Winfield Township by the Yoder brothers closed in 1987 after an impasse with workers in contract negotiations.
Lucovich said Ira Yoder died in July 1953, which could explain the plaque’s dedication in December 1954.
He recalls and has photographs of the plaque encased in a concrete structure off Cabot-Winfield Road right before the hill that led to the entrance of the mushroom mine.
But that concrete structure could not have been the one in which the plaque currently sits, as the year 1993 appears on its top right corner.
Lucovich said the “1993” in the memorial’s concrete could refer to the year Moonlight Mushrooms closed in Worthington, but he is not sure.
The location opened the next year as Creekside Mushrooms, he said.
During its peak years, the mine in Winfield Township produced 18 million pounds of mushrooms per year, Lucovich said.
Creekside Mushrooms in Worthington produced 60 million pounds per year during its heyday, he said.
Anyone with information on the Ira D. Yoder memorial is asked to call the Winfield Township office at 724-352-3333.
