The dairy industry has been an important part of Gallatin County agriculture since early white settlers brought their milk cows across the plains in the 1860s. One hundred years ago, small and large dairy farms helped feed Gallatin Valley’s growing population. Dozens of dairies and creameries transformed locally produced milk and cream into a variety of delicious products.

Though essential, dairy farming was (and is) hard work. In a 1975 oral history interview, Bridger Canyon resident Laurence Christie described a typical morning on his parent’s farm in the 1920s. “We got up about 5:30 in the morning and three of us went out to milk. When my brother wasn’t old enough to milk, she [Laurence’s mother, Eva] went out to milk. Dad [William], my mother, and myself. We milked fifteen cows, which was about five cows apiece, and we had a little building we called the cabin. It sat just forty feet from the house and about the same distance from the barn, and we had a cream separator in there. We separated it [the milk], and we took the cream and we put it in a tank of cold water, spring water, and cooled it. We carried the skim milk back out to some pigs we had... we used to have around twenty pigs, and we’d feed all the milk from these fifteen cows—skim milk—back to these pigs.”

Cream separators, like what Christie described, were used to separate cream (higher fat content) and skim milk (lower fat content) from raw milk. After milking, cow’s milk was poured into a basin on the top of the separator apparatus. Simply put, turning a crank on the side created a centrifugal force which pulled the heavier skim milk toward the outside and left the lighter-weight cream in the center. Each product flowed through separate spouts into their respective containers. Cream was often used to make butter in hand-cranked butter churns or was transported to one of the dairies in town for processing into other products. Skim milk was often fed to hogs or other livestock on the farm.

In his interview, Laurence Christie mentioned how his mother would churn the cream about once a week. Many people made their own butter in churns of various sizes and shapes. The most essential ingredients in homemade butter, besides cream, were time and physical effort. Butter churns were filled with fresh cream and then it was up to the operator to turn the hand crank over and over again, rotating the interior paddles through the liquid until it solidified. If desired, the butter could then be transferred into storage containers or to molds for shaping. Christie estimated that some weeks his family produced one hundred to one-hundred-fifty pounds of butter, which they sold for extra income.

Local farmers also periodically transported their cream to one of a number of dairies in Bozeman.Historic photographs of local creamery interiors show work areas filled with large vats and tanks surrounded by metal cream canisters of varying sizes. Dairies ranged in size from small “mom and pop” operations to well-established, long-lasting businesses. The Gallatin History Museum’s collection of local artifacts includes dairy-related objects, including a token good for one quart of milk from Bohart Dairy (located near the mouth of Bridger Canyon), a “Gallatin Gold” glass milk bottle, and a “Gallatin Maid” butter carton.

There are too many dairies to mention by name, but many were family operations that locals still remember for exceptional quality and friendly service. The North Edge Dairy, operated by Alvia Elmer Westlake and his son Myron, was located on W. Peach St. between 3rd and 4th Avenues. The Westlakes arrived in Bozeman from Iowa in 1910 and established a farm on what was at that time the northwest edge of town. Their dairy business, initially called Westlake Dairy, was a local staple from the early 1920s to 1965. Another great example of a small but very popular family run dairy was Boylan’s Dairy Bar, located just southwest of the MSU campus. The Dairy Bar was operated by Paul Sr. and Mildred Boylan, who were one branch of a larger Boylan farming family in the Gallatin Valley. The Boylans sold dairy products out of a small stand on South 19th Avenue, just south of Kagy Blvd. from the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s.

Even Montana State College (now MSU) ran a dairy. As a land grant school, agricultural experiment stations and extension services have long been a significant part of school history. Besides training students, agricultural science programs conducted research and provided support to Montana’s farmers and ranchers. In the first half of the twentieth century, research at MSC focused on enhancing the quality and quantity of dairy products. The college dairy herd included several breeds, among them Holsteins, Jersey Shorthorns, and Herefords. One particular line of Holsteins known as the Konigens were large milk producers; MSC’s famous cow, Grace, set a record for 10-year-old cows in 1924. She produced 32,294.2 pounds of milk and 1,051.9 pounds of butterfat that year. The average production per cow in Montana at the time was closer to 4,000 pounds per year.

One of the larger Bozeman operations was Kessler Dairy. Established in 1930 by Conrad Emil and Bertha Sieg Kessler, the family provided dairy products on their Huffine Lane farm and quickly acquired a truck to start a milk delivery route. Conrad and Bertha’s sons purchased the growing business from their parents in the late 1930s and built a processing center at 708 W. Main St. in Bozeman in 1939. Today, BagelWorks is located in the former Kessler dairy building on West Main. Business continued to boom for the Kessler family and in 1955 they moved into the massive former Lehrkind Brewery building at 803 N. Wallace Ave. and converted it into a dairy processing plant. The Kessler family continued operating their dairy plant on N. Wallace Ave. until 1973.

Like the Kessler Dairy, many local businesses made home deliveries. The Gallatin History Museum’s collection includes colorful signal order flags provided to customers by Jersey Dairy and Darigold. Customers chose the desired product from a cardboard fan-like arrangement of options and placed the flag in an empty bottle on their porch. The deliverer, or milk man, would then leave the requested extra quantities of butter, cream, or milk in addition to the customer’s regular order.

Jersey Dairy was a privately run dairy which operated from the mid-1920s into the mid-1950s. During its last ten years of operation it was located at 27 N. Tracy Ave. Darigold began as the Gallatin Co-Operative Creamery in 1932. According to a Darigold history titled Sixty Year Review, this organization of area farmers was born from a desire “to process and market their own dairy products to obtain a better price and stabilize their markets.” The goal of the cooperative was for farmers to work together to sell their products and to achieve fair prices for everyone.

The Gallatin Co-Operative Creamery operated out of the old Milwaukee passenger depot on E. Main Street (near the current location of today’s Bozeman Public Library) from 1933 until 1942, when it relocated to the southeast corner of N. Grand Ave. and W. Mendenhall St. (current location of Sack’s Thrift Store). Five years later, the Co-Operative purchased the aforementioned Jersey Dairy on N. Tracy Ave., which by that time led the Gallatin Valley in milk sales. Growing steadily during WWII and the post-war era, the Co-Op acquired land on N. 7th Ave. and in 1957 opened a new facility under the name Darigold. Through the years, the Co-Op sold products under various labels, including “Jersey,” “Gallatin Gold,” “Gallatin Maid,” “Darigold,” and “Country Classic.”

Bridger Canyon dairy farmer Laurence Christie joined the Co-Operative Creamery in 1934 and ended his career in management. “I became a director in 1940 and was director of the Darigold plant for some 29 years. I’ve seen it grow from a little cream station down at the old Milwaukee depot... All we were doing down there was making butter, so we moved up and bought a building and overhauled part of it and had a full-fledged creamery and butter plant… it was only a year or two later until we bought out the Jersey Dairy, which had been one of the larger milk routes, and that’s when we got into the retail business.  And it wasn’t only a few years later until we outgrew that, so we built a new plant out on North 7th. It has gotten to be quite a business, because we had something we grew just for ourselves.”

Reflecting in 1975 on how dairy farming changed since the 1920s, Christie remarked that one of the biggest differences was that milking cows and processing cream were no longer done by hand. With the help of modern machinery and refrigeration, dairy herds grew, production of various commodities became easier, and the volume of products increased exponentially. In the last fifty years, the dairy industry has continued to change, and one wonders what dairy farmers like Laurence Christie would think of operations today. Fortunately, Bozeman still has remnants of these early dairies, which serve as reminders of a significant part of Gallatin Valley agriculture.