Its the weekend! Good Saturday to all of you. You might know that Arkansas is known for being chicken country. My husband and I were talking, and I told him I thought I should do a post about how Arkansas became such a huge poultry state. I asked him, “Who started all of that here, Tyson?” He said, “No. Lane Poultry". His family is from Grannis, and his own grandmother was one of the first local farmers to raise chickens for Clift Lane. That stopped me in my tracks because, like most people, I had always heard the Arkansas poultry story told as though Tyson started everything. From rags to riches to bankruptcy to DOJ investigation. Around 1952, Clift and Dorothy Lane began processing chickens at their home in Grannis. They later bought the old railroad depot, added a rendering plant in 1962 and a hatchery in 1968. After acquiring Arkansas Valley Industries, Lane Poultry became one of the largest poultry companies in the state and a major employer across western Arkansas. Lane Poultry was hardly some little chicken operation in Grannis. Before financial trouble forced the company into Chapter 11 reorganization in 1982, Clift and Dorothy Lane had reportedly built one of the largest privately owned poultry companies in America, with 19 plants across six states and approximately 12,000 employees. What followed included years of bankruptcy litigation, congressional scrutiny and Department of Justice investigations, although the available record describes declined prosecutions rather than an actual DOJ prosecution. Tyson acquired Lane Processing in 1986, and that acquisition helped make Tyson the nation’s leading poultry processor. John Tyson certainly deserves his place in Arkansas history, but he didn’t build this state’s poultry industry by himself. Clift and Dorothy Lane and farm families like my husband’s belong in that history too. History usually remembers the name left on the building. It tends to forget the people whose names were taken often were the farmers who helped build the business in the first place.