Purina Mills, Inc. is the largest manufacturer of animal feed products in the United States, producing more than five million tons of feed each year. Through its 50 feed mills, the company produces thousands of feed formulations specially designed for various types of animals, including beef and dairy cattle, goats, horses, sheep, pigs, poultry, pets, and lab and zoo animals. Purina also operates more than 35 retail outlets, which sell animal feed, lawn and garden supplies, hardware, and related items.

1894: The Robinson-Danforth Commission Company is founded.
1902: Company name is changed to Ralston Purina Company. Company adopts the red-and-white checkerboard logo.
1986: Ralston Purina sells its Purina Mills subsidiary to British Petroleum.
1993: British Petroleum sells Purina Mills to a management group led by the Sterling Group, of Houston, Texas.
1997: Purina Mills rolls out America’s Country Store retail chain, begins buying and reselling hogs in an effort to bolster swine feed sales.
1998: Koch Industries acquires Purina Mills.
1999: Purina Mills files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Members: ToXiC, Brute, Myth, AquaSlayer
Photos by: ToXiC w/ FujiFilm FinePix Z 8.0
Written by: ToXiC
Dec. 2007 Trip #1

We’ve been to Purina perhaps more times than any other place. Writing a specific trip log for everytime we’ve been there would be useless. So I suppose I’ll write whats practical, the first time we went and completed the whole buildings exploration.

It all started one night when I was walking to my parents house and I literally ran into the building. I was smashed drunk at the time coming home from an after bar. I managed to find an entrance into the building and scoped it out for a few feet to make sure it wasnt a dead end door. I left an walked home to sleep.

I called my coharts the next day and they were totally down for some explorin. So the next night we got together when I got off work. We parked a couple of blocks away from the building, got our stuff together, and then proceeded to enter the building being very eager to do some explorin!

Upon entering we noticed how unvandalized the building was. The Purina Corporation decided to close down the Plant in July of 2003, that being about 3.5 years, most buildings within 6 months are tagged, vandalized, copper stripped, and window broken, and being in fairly good condition considering was a shock to us.

We started exploring the basement, being the entrance and work our way up to the very top. The basement was in pretty bad condition from being cleared out and heavily water damaged. After exploring the various conveyor belts and side rooms we found a staircase leading to the 1st floor.

Brute being first up told us there was a huge shipping and receiving area in the immediate vicinity. We headed to the end of the building where a small office was that contained some empty desks and destroyed ceiling lights. We were heading towards the other end of the building when I stepped in something that almost made me slip. Looking down it was this nasty rotting decayed Molasses. I pretty much yelled “Fuckin A”…

There was a Locker Lounge, Cafeteria, and some type of office which to our huge surprise contained atleast 30 former employees Social Security Numbers on pieces of metal strips. Im not sure why Purina Corp. would do such a thing as to leave an employees valuable SSN in an abandoned building. As shocked as we were, we decided to take them and put them in a secure place to where they wouldnt be found.

Continuing on from there we discovered the lower working of the building. All kind of machinery, pressurized pipes, tools and left over equipment.  We then headed up to the 2nd, 3rd and 4th floor.  Besides a considerable amount of material, a fork lift, some tools, perfectly good desks, and so on, they were fairly plain and stripped of any reusable-valuable parts/machinery. After searching it thoroughly and finding nothing of the utmost interest we moved onto the southern larger building finding only one peculiar thing of interest. The fact that the whole southern stairway had been collapsed by a single object. We were actually shocked and not to mention that I almost stepped down it not noticing the missing stairs thanks to Myth.

After that incident me and myth being the 2 of the 4 in the part not afraid of heights decided we were going to get to the very top of purina. It took some turns and guess work but we finally discovered a path of sorts that would lead us to the top. We started on the 3rd floor roof of the south building.

Climbing up a ladder I followed Myth. We ended up on the 6th floor of the building. After scaling a couple more floors from the exterior of building by various means we had ended up I want to guess the 9th floor finally were able to get inside and take a staircase the rest of the way. I took the final ladder up to the roof of the building, opening the fire escape hatch I looked to my right and what a beautiful view of downtown it was.

After having a few smokes and taking some shots we decided to head down before our coharts who were driving us decided to have a mutiny and abandon us.

Source
1) http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Purina-Mills-Inc-Company-History.html

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Additional Pictures from 2007-2008

2009 Trip w/ Municipal Heroes