TOP:USC Digital Archive
LOWER 2: LA Public Library
55 years ago, the opening of the Budweiser plant on Roscoe Blvd. was a big event. Costing $20,000,000
and employing 1500 workers, the plant was a large contributor to the post-war prosperity of Van Nuys.
In 1957, the NAACP launched a boycott of Budweiser beer. An NAACP spokesman said that there were only two “Negroes” employed by Annheuser-Busch in their entire Los Angeles operations! Here is a more detailed article about the racial prejudice black workers faced in the 1950s.
Busch Gardens and Bird Sanctuary was part of the complex and a major tourist attraction for many years until it closed in 1976. Here are more photos of that attraction.
Here in Van Nuys 
I went to Busch Gardens and on a tour of the Bud planet in the 70’s when I was just a little kid. They gave free beer samples to the adults. I remember actually getting Bud Man stickers at Boys Market (long gone from Ventura and Densmore) in one of those little sticker vending machines. Great way to market beer drinking to little kids! 😉
It’s funny, when I was growing up in the Valley, I used to think that the Bud plant smelled disgusting when you’d drive by it on the 405, but after driving by it twice daily in my commute to CSUN as a college student, I grew to LIKE it! Now I think the smell of hops and yeast is cool 🙂
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