Clover Club Foods Exhibit: A Journey Through Local History

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Clover Club Chips were launched in 1938, by Hod and Clover Sanders. The young couple lived in Kaysville, Utah, a “quiet village north of Salt Lake City.” A bank loan helped the couple buy their first Kettle, and Clover supervised production. Hod bought the potatoes and sold the Chips to local stores. From such a humble start, the company grew into a major snack food operation that served 11 Western states.

Clover Club factory. The company was launched in 1938.  Courtesy Kaysville-Fruit Heights Museum

On a 1973 bag of potato chips, the Sanders story was told: “We live in a quiet little country town of Kaysville, Utah, about 17 miles north of Salt Lake City. Almost all the folks here have some quality specialty like homemade chili sauce, apple pie and chokecherry jelly. Clover always made the best potato chips in town — or the world, for that matter.

Clover Club was Kaysville’s largest employer as recently as 1991, with 300 employees. In 1997, it was the city’s third-largest property-tax payer, behind Albertson’s and Bowman’s grocery stores. Years ago, the Clover Club potato chip factory had a steady presence in Kaysville. The secret to Clover Club’s superior quality stayed the same for all its years of its operation — they cared. They were a hometown company that wanted to provide customers with the finest potato chips in the world. The Kaysville plant was closed after 62 years of operation. The property that is now the Kaysville Branch Library and Heritage Park was the location of the plant until 1996.

Now the public can explore the rich history of Clover Club Foods at an exhibit hosted by the Kaysville-Fruit Heights Museum. Whether you have memories of the factory or are curious about this local legacy, enjoy artifacts and stories through this exhibit. The Clover Club Foods Company display by the Kaysville-Fruit Heights Museum was fully installed and open for viewing on Nov. l, 2024, and Will continue through the end of February 2025. The exhibit, found at Kaysville City Hall (23 East Center Street), is open during city business hours. It features a timeline of the company for visitors to explore, along with memorabilia and artwork. A brief, one-page timeline will also be available as a souvenir.

Given that many current residents have either worked at the Kaysville factory or for the company, interactive components are being planned at various times throughout the display period, including: a chart for visitors to add their names and share a short memory as part of a survey of past employees; collectible Clover Club recipes, with a different recipe each week; recorded memories from former employees; and a trivia or scavenger hunt game. There is a handout available to take, but the guide is a copy to be browsed while at the display.

A foods display of the products Clover Club made.

On display are management documents, advertising and promotional, artwork, display racks and bags/containers, photographs, product and staff incentives. While these are not all the items reflective of Clover Club that the museum has in its collection, it is all they have room to display at this time. The museum is negotiating With Kaysville City for more permanent and safe display cabinets and space. While they are no longer able to use the old Library building, they are grateful to both Kaysville and Fruit Heights for providing work, storage and display space while they search for more. They are also grateful that the rock building has been saved because it is the only historical building that Kaysville City owns, having once housed the city administrative offices and county health center as well as the city public library, one of the first in northern Utah.

The Kaysville-Fruit Heights Museum started in about 2018 as part of a committee trying to save the old Kaysville Library. It was decided by the chairperson that there needed to be a split, creating a fund-raising/history arm and a political voting arm. The Kaysville-Fruit Heights Museum of History and Art was created With Fawn Morgan as the Chair and other former committee members as officers. The historical part of the title is more obvious as preservation efforts began to save and share local history, buildings and artifacts. The art part is included because the LeConte Stewart Art Gallery was in the rock building even before the library moved out.

When the preservation arm of the Kaysville-Fruit Heights Museum Committee first formed to save the old Kaysville Library, it created a charitable 501c3 which required a board, by-laws, and all kinds of boxes to check yearly. The group meets regularly to decide direction, form sub-committees, and approve financial or other concerns. They are both Kaysville and Fruit Heights because until 1939, they were Kaysville and unofficially East Kaysville. Many of the board members live in Fruit Heights. For that matter, Layton was part of Kaysville for quite a while and all three cities share a common starting point. The committee has a Layton resident on the board as well as several Kaysville residents. They are all volunteers with professional skills and personal hobbies who also put in a load of hours weekly on committee work.

Workers Gladys Hayes, Francis Morton, Cleo Young, and Lucy King.
Photos courtesy of the Kaysville-Fruit Heights Museum.

Bill Sanders, the former curator of the Heritage Museum in Layton, is one of the advisors and a Kaysville resident. Other board members are long-standing volunteers in the community when the Kaysville-Fruit Heights Historical Committee and the Kaysville-Layton Historical Society were active during the 1970s-1990s. They have a member who represents the museum on the Kaysville City Historical Preservation Commission and one who IS active in the Fort Buenaventura Mountain Man organization. Others have an ancestral heritage deeply rooted in Davis County.

The museum has been preparing metal trail signs and collecting Information and items for a band exhibit in the spring. They originally thought a quick Clover Club filler display would be easy to put in place, but the interest has been so high that plans have grown. So many people have worked for the company or loved to eat their potato chips that everyone remembers some interesting bit.

“I think the fact that the senses trigger memories and the subsequent details that are sparked by the smell of potato chips is a factor in the interest,” Museum Chair Fawn Morgan said. “The local success of the company for so long gave Hod and Clover Sanders a cache and pride factor.”

The Museum Advisor, Bill Sanders, is the nephew of Hod and Clover. He has written fun and informative posts on their Facebook page about the company and the owners and managers. You can visit informative and historical pages at: https://www.facebook.com/KFHMuseum and https://www.facebook.com/groups/543803645975594.

Morgan is a retired teacher librarian and daughter of dedicated local historians. She taught students research skills and learned how to catalog, so she feels she has been prepared for this second life. “Most of us thought we were volunteering for a short-term committee but feel passionately in the power of local historical stories and those stories told through art and artifacts,” Morgan said. “They believe that history told in stories allows us to evaluate the past and then move forward more effectively and in the right direction.’

Hod, Clover and Bob Sanders

The museum members believe that everyone has a story, and that story deserves to be remembered and told. They believe that the trials and successes of the past can give us the unifying belief that we, too, individually and collectively, can move forward through hard times.

Please email Fawn or Kris at ourkaysvillestory@gmail.com if you have memorabilia you would like to display or donate to the museum. Watch for full guide at https://www.kfhmuseum.org online soon.