It is known that Los Angeles County was once a real dairy capital of America. However, this changed with the advent of urbanization. Los Angeles Name will tell more about the journey of the first dairy farms.
The first records: The spirit of history
According to the earliest surviving records, women were engaged in making butter and cheese from milk in San Gabriel as early as 1776. By the early 1930s and 1940s, dairy factories were thriving in remote areas. These included the South Bay, San Fernando Valley and San Gabriel. In total, there were 75 dairy factories, including Adohr Farms.
This dairy farm was located in Tarzana, California, at the intersection of Ventura Boulevard and Lindley Avenue. It was founded in 1916 by Merritt Adamson in honor of his wife. During the Great Depression, the family sold off much of their land, and the dairy farm moved to Camarillo by the late 1940s. In the mid-1960s, the family sold the farm to Southland Corporation.
Urbanization and its impact on dairy farms
After the onset and subsequent end of World War II, urbanization and rapid residential construction were observed. All of this led to the displacement of dairy farms. They were mostly located in the southeastern part of the county.
It was during this time that small towns became known as L.A.’s Milk Shed, which included hundreds of dairy farms and approximately 100,000 cows. This was a separate region of milk production that could be supplied to the necessary areas without spoilage.
The rapid growth spurred the creation and consolidation of a city known as Dairy Valley, where zoning laws were enacted that positively influenced dairy production. Advances in technology increased the space of milk storage from 30 to over 300 miles. As a result, virtually every farm in the northeastern United States had at least one dairy facility.
The closure of the last major dairy plant
In 1956, the population of Dairy Valley had reached 3,500, with 118 dairies and 80,000 cows. Eleven years later, the area became a suburb and was renamed Cerritos.
By 1974, in the suburb of Los Angeles (Cerritos), the number of dairy farms had decreased to 21 and the number of cows to 7,000. According to the Los Angeles Times, by 1980, the last major dairy plant had closed.
In the 1960s, more and more dairy plants decided to leave the county because of urbanization. Accordingly, there were still many dairy farms and herds outside the southeastern area. At that time, there were 14 dairy plants in the San Fernando Valley, the largest of which were Jessup Dairy in Laurel Canyon and Brentford in Pacoima. By 1976, the number of cows on dairy farms had reduced to 13,500 across 25 herds.
The last four dairy farms
By 1992, only four farms left. According to the Los Angeles Times, these included:
- Norwalk Dairy, located on Rosecrans Avenue in Santa Fe Springs, spanned 10 acres. It was founded in 1939 and had a herd of 300 cows.
- Valley View Farms on Valley View Avenue in La Mirada was established in 1952. The number of cows reached 1,000 on 25 acres.
- Paul’s Dairy on Paramount Boulevard in Long Beach was opened in 1941 and owned a herd of 250 cows, occupying an area of 8 acres.
- High Desert Dairy, a dairy farm, was situated near Lancaster.
It is worth noting that Peter Pitches’s ranch in Castaic housed a prison dairy farm, which supplied milk to the county’s inmates. This farm was closed in 1992.
Eventually, the last dairy farms in the county also began to shut down. Thus, the story of the first dairy farms in Los Angeles came to an end.
