Dairy Industry in the Santa Fe Area

The same flat country that fed Galveston's milk supply also gave it water. Alta Loma's first artesian well was brought in in 1895, and by 1897 thirty wells were sending nearby Galveston some six million gallons of fresh drinking water a day, the Handbook of Texas says. Alta Loma then had about 200 people and more than a dozen businesses, including a fruit cannery. The Hoyland and Johnson Creamery went up in 1912. Booms in pears, figs and oranges had come earlier, before the railroad town was platted in 1883.

What the plaque says

Dairy Industry in the Santa Fe Area The railroad communities of Arcadia, Alta Loma, and Algoa, established in the 1890s, formed the nucleus of the Santa Fe area at the turn of the 20th century. Citrus and fig production, truck farming, and a burgeoning daily industry dominated the local economy at that time. Creameries operating at Alta Loma and Arcadia produced and shipped large amounts of butter and milk to markets in Galveston and Houston by 1912. Dairy farming, unlike the citrus and fig industry, emerged as a major economic base in the area during the 1920s. According to local tradition they became so prevalent during this time that most everyone had one. Trucks had supplanted trains for transporting dairy products to markets in Galveston and Houston by this time. Local citizens recalled catching rides on milk trucks before community bus service was available. Although able to recover from a crushing hoof and mouth epidemic in the mid-1920s, many small dairies were bought out by larger operations able to afford land leases for grazing purposes made necessary by stock laws of the 1930s restricting grazing on public lands. Though many dairies prospered with the introduction of automation in the 1950s the gradual loss of workers to higher paying urban jobs resulted in the closing of all Santa Fe area dairies in the 1970s. (1992)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Space Center Houston — 12 mi
  The visitor center of NASA's Johnson Space Center at Clear Lake, with flown capsules, a shuttle replica riding a 747, and tram tours to Mission Control and a Saturn V.
• Galveston Island State Park — 15 mi
  A cattle ranch willed to the state that now runs the full width of Galveston Island, from two miles of Gulf beach across dunes and prairie to the marshes of West Galveston Bay.
• Galveston Seawall and the 1900 Storm — 20 mi
  The concrete wall along the Gulf that Galveston built after the hurricane of September 8, 1900, which killed between 6,000 and 8,000 people in a city of 38,000.
• Texas Seaport Museum and the Elissa — 20 mi
  An iron barque launched in Aberdeen in 1877 that called at Galveston twice, ended up smuggling in the Adriatic, and was bought back from a Greek scrapyard to sail again from Pier 22.

More markers nearby

• Runge Park — 0.4 mi
• Original Site of First Baptist Church of Alta Loma — 2.3 mi
• Hitchcock Depot — 3.1 mi
• U. S. Naval Air Station (Blimp Base) — 4.6 mi