Description
The California Dairy Industry History Collection
contains documentary items extracted from a large assemblage of materials
collected for use at an anticipated California Dairy Museum. Between 1976 and
1981 California State Parks, in cooperation with the California Dairy Museum
and Educational Foundation (CDMEF), participated in a joint venture to create a
museum at Wilder Ranch State Park in Santa Cruz County. The museum was intended
to showcase the contributions of the dairy industry to the social and economic
development of California. In 1976 the CDMEF donated its collection of dairy
machinery, equipment, and archival materials to the California State Parks. The
foundation also established an advisory committee to assist California State
Parks in managing the collection and in locating and acquiring additional
materials for the proposed museum. In 1981 the State Parks Commission voted not
to fund the museum, and the collection went into storage—first at Wilder Ranch
State Park and then at the State Museum Resources Center in West Sacramento.
The archival collection described in this guide covers the period of 1856 to
1986 with the bulk of the material dating from 1930 to 1978..
Background
Cattle first entered California with the Spanish missionaries in the
late 1700’s. Milk and cheese were consumed at the Franciscan Missions from San
Diego to the northernmost mission at Sonoma. At times milk may even have been
an essential element of the missionaries’ diet. Father Junipero Serra wrote in
1772 that milk was their “chief subsistence” at Mission San Carlos in Carmel,
and other records show that as early as 1776 women were making cheese and
butter at Mission San Gabriel. But the first cattle in California were of
Mexican stock, better suited for meat, hide and tallow than for milk. As these
herds grew, a lucrative trade in tallow and hides developed. These goods left
California by ship, and the Eastern merchants’ desire for these products in the
1830s contributed to the growth of seaport trading communities at San Diego,
Santa Barbara, and Monterey. In the first few decades after the arrival of
cattle in California, dairying was incidental to the more lucrative tallow and
hide trades. But as the herds grew stronger and larger, dairying became more
and more popular. The collection contains the papers of Herman Grabow (1898-1993), a cow
tester, dairyman, radio personality, journalist and lobbyist for the California
Grange. Trained as a cow tester at the University of Minnesota, Grabow came to
California in 1923, where he found work as a tester in Ventura County. After
losing his dairy in the midst of the Great Depression, Grabow came to San
Joaquin County where he acquired a spread that was being sold for back taxes.
With financial help from Roosevelt's New Deal, Grabow bought alfalfa seed and
twenty cows. By the late 1930s he was well-established and had become Director
of the local artificial insemination association. Beginning in the 1940’s,
Grabow became a farmer’s advocate, working for forty years to advance the cause
of the California dairy industry through legislation and promotion as a
lobbyist for the California State Grange and as President of the California
Dairymen, Inc. Grabow also published a regular column on dairy-related topics
in the California Farmer during the 1960s and hosted a weekly radio program, "A
Dairyman's Views on the News" on KTRB in Modesto, California from 1955 to 1960.
He will be best remembered (among dairymen in particular) for his contributions
to the passage of the California Milk Pooling Act (1969), which gave
independent dairymen greater protection from milk price fluctuations.
Restrictions
Property rights reside with the California State Parks. Literary rights
are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. For permission to
reproduce or to publish, please contact California State Parks.