The building was located along the Alameda Creek, for transportation purposes, since there weren't any railroads.

Sugar was distributed via a wheel steamer named "The Rosa," to San Francisco from the factory.

This unprecedented heat wave caused excessive fermentation in the beets that were processed at the plant, causing them to produce an inordinate amount of ethanol which catalyzed the corrosion of their pewter containers.

One predecessor to the Alvarado factory was Germania Sugar, founded by Ernst Theodore and Gottlieb Gennert in Chatsworth Illinois in 1863.

An insufficient water supply and soil which was poorly suited to sugar beets led to disbanding the Chatsworth operation in 1870.

[5] While not a commercial success, lessons from the Chatsworth venture were valuable to beet sugar cultivation and manufacture elsewhere in the United States.