In this look at Omaha’s dairy history, there’s plenty to go around.
But you have to provide the Oreos.
Omaha’s milkmen go back to 1863. At one time, there were more than 120 dairies.
But now, the city is down to one processing plant that, by happenstance, has long occupied the site of one of the first dairies.
“J.T. Paulsen respectfully announces to the citizens of Omaha that he is prepared to furnish Fresh Milk to Hotels(,) Boarding Houses, and private families in large or small quantities,” read a classified ad that first appeared in the Dec. 4, 1863, edition of the Tri-Weekly Nebraska Republican.
Other farmers had small dairy herds prior to Paulsen, but he appears to be the first to offer retail sales. The future state senator’s first farm was near 20th and Lake Streets. At the time of his death in 1889, he was the owner of Rock Springs Dairy at 58th and Center Streets.
The Omaha city directory in 1866 lists two dairymen — C.L. Bristol north of town and Oliver Singleton at 12th and Jones.
Three years later, Martin Tibke started a dairy at 29th and Cuming. (This is the spot where Hiland Dairy still operates.) He later moved his dairies north of Benson.
The hills north of Tibke’s dairy were popular for other milk businesses. Among those listed in the 1876 city directory were those of W.C. Ainsworth, Henry Batdorf, G.T. Cornish, Charles C. Littlefield and J. Stuben.
Southwest of 36th and Center Streets, Samuel J. Howell’s West Omaha Dairy and Stock Farm in 1876 offered “pure and unskimmed” milk delivered in any part of the city at 5 cents per quart. Howell’s great-great-great granddaughter is Douglas County Commissioner Maureen Boyle.
Bernard H. Post came from Germany in 1878 with $800. In the early 1880s he started the Post Dairy on 27th Street between Burt and Cuming Streets. In 1885 he relocated the dairy to southwest of 72nd and Maple Streets and 29 years later he sold 480 acres of the diary for the Benson Gardens and Benson Acres housing subdivisions for $150,000.
The overly ambitious Omaha Dairy Association, which began in 1885 on 100 acres near 60th and McKinley Streets, sold stock for $25 a share with the assurance that the company would supply shareholders with 22 quarts of pure milk for $1 and pay out yearly dividends between 10% and 17%.
The association dissolved less than two years later and the dairy went private.
Alamito Dairy (1902-1977) was the city’s first modern milk producer-distributor. And was the only one named for a famed trotting stallion.
Clinton H. Briggs started the Alamito Stock Farm along the Big Papillion Creek at 108th Street and West Dodge Road in 1894. He took on W. Farnam Smith as a partner to form the Alamito Farm Dairy Co. in 1901.
Alamito merged in 1903 with the Locust Lane Farm Sanitary Dairy, which the Schwager brothers operated with 1,000 cows at Fort Calhoun. The dairy’s operations moved from 20th and Farnam Streets to 18th and Farnam before construction of a three-story concrete building at 2601 Leavenworth St. in 1914 for its permanent home.
In South Omaha, Anton Grobeck started producing and distributing milk with eight cows in 1893. His pasture is now part of Spring Lake Park’s golf course.
His son, Harry, opened the Grobeck Dairy processing plant in 1939 and sold it to Alamito in 1960.
Roberts Dairy came to town in 1922. J.R. Roberts owned milk plants in Lincoln and Sioux City. For expansion into Omaha, he sought a location near 24th Street between Leavenworth and Cuming. He ended up with the old Tibke land at 29th and Cuming.
By the 1950s Roberts was the largest Midwest dairy outside of the Chicago area.
It was, and is, a prime spot for distribution. U.S. Highways 73 and 75 ran on either side of the plant for years and the North Freeway (U.S. 75) and Interstate 480 are today’s connectors for Hiland Dairy, which acquired the Roberts label in 2013.
Goodrich Dairy’s legacy is the ice cream that’s still sold in sandwich shops around the area.
Harold H. Buss, from Hoskins, Nebraska, was a route man, making deliveries in a horse-drawn wagon, for Alamito. He ventured out on his own, bottling Good-Rich milk for delivery to Benson-area customers from a dairy at 6934 Spencer St.
With $500 borrowed from a brother-in-law, Buss bought land for the original Goodrich plant in 1932 at 608 N. Saddle Creek Road. Goodrich began as a wholesaler to grocers, but changed its model when it opened four stand-alone stores in 1949.
At its peak, Goodrich had 48 stores in four states before Omaha investors purchased the company in 1982. Milk sales ended when Omaha production stopped in 1988.
Royal Dairy, started in 1933 by Robert L. Pettit, replaced Good-Rich at 6934 Spencer St. In 1937, the business moved to a new building at 7021 Maple St.
Pettit sold Royal in 1948 to F. William Beeler, who subsequently sold to Roberts in 1966.
Grace Roberts, the first employee at Roberts Dairy, was its vice president and general sales manager when she broke away to start Graystone Dairy in 1940. She bought the Stone Products building, built and finished of stone and first occupied by a memorial company, on the southwest corner of 38th Avenue and Leavenworth.
After Grace Roberts’ death in 1957, her will provided for 28 employees to take ownership. Fairmont Foods acquired Graystone in 1969, with the plant operating for a couple more years.
Sorensen Dairy was the last farm dairy. George Sorensen started it at 5611 Florence Blvd. in 1914, but under duress he moved to 66th Street and Redick Avenue in 1917. Neighbors took legal action because they didn’t believe a dairy should be in a residential area.
Alamito bought Sorensen in 1966.
George Vercruysse was a dairyman/night club proprietor in the final years of Prohibition at his dairy on the southwest corner of 52nd Street and Ames Avenue. A newspaper ad proclaimed the Bon Ton (later the Vagabond) was “the ideal spot to spend an enjoyable evening.”
There was no cover charge to dance to the likes of Jessie Boone’s orchestra, but there was a $1 minimum food charge. Choice steaks and fried chicken were the house specialties.
If your family’s farm dairy hasn’t been mentioned, it is likely memorialized in an extensive collection at the Museum of Danish America in Elk Horn, Iowa. The late Howard Jensen, who died in 2007, donated his indexed files of 1,000 dairies that operated from 1885 to 1945 around Omaha.
