Foot Tanning Company is a leather production facility located in Red Wing, Minnesota.
The company also supplies over 1.5 million linear feet of leather for use in the production of military footwear per year, extending a tradition that began with World War I, when the tannery supplied boot leathers for the construction of soldier boots.
Hides are sourced from Feedlot cattle raised on ranches in Nebraska and Texas which are then run through primary processing in Minnesota and Iowa.
Wet-Blue hides produce stable leather products that are durable and flexible; and are able to maintain these characteristics over time.
The longer a hide is spun in the barrel, the more time the dyes and oils have to seep into the cells and fibers of the leather.
Tanneries process animal skins with the use of chemicals to alter the proteins and produce a durable and flexible product.
Foot Tanning Company and the Wet Blue facilities they source their hides from report a waste water impact of 28 m^3 per ton.
Precipitation techniques and fluid-reuse has reduced the total amount of solid and water waste produced.
The original business was built along the shores of Trout Brook in Featherstone Township, just outside Red Wing, MN.
In the Cash Panic of 1893, the tannery managed to continue daily operations and pay its workers by issuing scrips reading “In 60 days we promise to pay to the order of bearer the sum of $5.00.” This tender was treated as cash and accepted by local merchants without discount.
With $250,000 being raised from local Red Wing residents and another $250,000 coming from the Foot family's own finances to help start construction of the new factory in early 1908.
Foot died July 4, 1957, 100 years after his father had originally arrived in Red Wing.
At this time, Red Wing, Minnesota was a booming hub of Goodhue County, situated on the shores of the Mississippi River with favorable portage and proximity to wheat supplies and the mills in Minneapolis.
S. B. was an active member in the local church, fraternal societies and municipal projects, he “became the president of the Red Wing and Iowa Railroad Company in 1881, hoping to build and operate a railroad from the Great Lakes shipping port of Duluth, through Red Wing, to the agricultural and coal mining region of Iowa.” [4]