New Model Dairy Colony

USA / California / Ontario /
 place with historical importance, draw only border
During the Mexican period, the land was once part of Rancho Santa Ana del Chino, a 22,000-acre rancho granted in 1841 by Governor Juan Bautista Valentín Alvarado y Vallejo to his uncle, Antonio Maria Lugo. The dairy colony represents the change from uneconomical and time consuming free range dairying to dry-lot dairying, and exodus of dairy operations from places such as Dairyland, Cypress, Bellflower, and Artesia due to soaring population growth and property taxes. The New Model Dairy Colony is a part of the larger Chino Dairy Preserve, formed in 1960 to protect dairy operations in the Chino Valley from relentless development.

When dairying came to the Chino Valley in the 1890s, dairy operations consisted of a few cows, a corral, and cans to hold the milk. Cheap pasture -- $2-3 per acre -- and no regulations made dairying an attractive business venture. Since feed didn't need to be imported, milk production was dependent solely on pasture conditions.

Prior to the 1930s, dairy cattle roamed land deemed unsuitable for the production of citrus, nuts, and other extremely profitable crops. The introduction of dry-lot dairying by Dutch and Portuguese immigrants allowed dairy farms to consolidate their operations into smaller areas while improving production. The post-WWII population surge increased the demand for dairy products while simulatenously decreasing the amount of available space for dairy operations through rising land prices, property taxes and subsequent development. Dairy operations were forced to streamline their operations -- increasing production on decreasing amounts of land -- in order to survive. The former City of Dairy Valley, for example, was the result of the incorporation of three dairies that once surrounded Artesia. It was inhabited by over 3,000 people and 60,000 cows. Sub-dividers were, by vote, allowed to enter the community in 1965. As a result, land values and property taxes rose, former unsuitable-for-anything-but-cows land was now valuable for people, and the dairy farmers moved out.

In 1960, a dairy preserve was formed in order to protect dairy farmers in the Chino Valley from development. By 1979, the Chino Valley contained the largest concentration of dairies in the world, producing 60% of the milk produced in California. Some 13 square miles were annexed by Ontario in 1999, and in 2007, development of the former dairy preserve was underway.

The general plan for New Model Colony calls for intensive redevelopment of the dairy properties to house an estimated 100,000 people and include parks, a lake, golf course, and commercial and industrial areas.

www.ci.ontario.ca.us/index.cfm/22695/26211
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   33°59'37"N   117°36'16"W

Comments

  • The bulldozing of the dairy preserve, with its Art Deco/Streamline Moderne milking parlors, to make way for yet another slop trough of mediocre, soulless suburban garbage is disgusting and sad. Sic transit gloria mundi.
  • Moo.
This article was last modified 11 years ago