Adplate from 1958 noting the inception of City Dairy in 1925 - Compliments of Ryal McMurry

     Herb H. Riffe [or Rife–although all later references spell the manager's name as Riffe, the Snooky ads consistently spelled it Rife] operated City Dairy for McKinley by at least April 2, 1931, and, after McKinley's death on May 17, 1932, ran the company for McKinley's heirs.  Riffe began a series of ads called the "Adventures of Snooky."  Snooky was a little boy who touted the praises of City Dairy amidst cartoon capers and witty sayings.  The series was somewhat crude by today's standards but featured a new ad each week–a radical departure from earlier dairy advertising in Alamogordo.  One ad featured Snooky in a suit, addressing an audience.  He queried "What comes first, gentlemen?  I ask you that!  Health, of course!  Now, what one food is best for people who are tall, short, wide or narrow, young or old, well or sick?  CITY DAIRY'S milk!  Sure!" (Alamogordo Advertiser June 11, 1931).  Snooky ads continued until the end of 1931.
 

Alamogodro Advertiser, April 2, 1931	Alamogodro Advertiser, June 4, 1931

     In 1932, City Dairy's ads included a complete price list, offering "Grade A Whole Milk, 9 c Quart[;] Grade A Whipping Cream, 75 c Quart . . .40 c Pint . . . 25 c Half Pt.[;] Grade A Coffee Cream 60 c Quart . . . 30 c Pint . . . 20 c Half Pt.[;] Grade A Buttermilk 7 c Quart[;] Grade A Separated Milk 5 c [Quart][;] Grade A Fresh Butter 30 c Pound" (Alamogordo Advertiser May 19, 1932).  Prices remained stable throughout 1933 but went up in 1934.  "A GRADE MILK" was now 40¢ a gallon, 12¢ a quart, and 7¢ a pint.  Buttermilk was 30¢ a gallon, 10¢ quart.  "CREAM, WHIPPING" rose to $1.00 a quart, 50¢ a pint, and 30¢ a half-pint, while "CREAM, COFFEE" went to 80¢ a quart, 40¢ a pint, and 25¢ a half-pint (Alamogordo Advertiser November 8, 1934).  An interesting part of the ad was that the "H. H. Rife, Manager" of earlier offerings had been obliterated.  Slight traces of Rife's name from the old ad can be easily discerned.  Despite that, New Mexico State Business Directories (1936, 1938, and 1940-41) listed "H. H. Riffle" (sic) as proprietor of City Dairy.  In the 1946-47 edition, the directory spelled his name "H. H. Riffe." Another price raise occurred in 1936:
 

In April, City Dairy ads ceased, although the dairy continued to prosper.  Finally, due to the pressures caused by World War II, Riffe told the estate he could no longer run the dairy, so McKinley's heirs sold the entire operation to the McMurry brothers (McMurry Interview 1998).
 

Alamogordo Advertiser, May 19, 1932

     F. E. McMurry was born in Fannin County, Texas, and migrated to Otero County, New Mexico, in August 1934.  McMurry and his wife, Virginia, had lived in Parmer County (Texas) until the "dust bowl" conditions of the early 1930s forced the move to a more hospitable area.  The couple had nine children, seven of whom joined their parents in Alamogordo.  Virginia died March 13, 1941, and McMurry remarried to Kathryn McKinley (daughter of Dr. Eber McKinley, the owner of City Dairy–this was two years before the McMurry brothers bought City Dairy) later that year.  The couple produced four more children.  McMurry, himself, died in December 1975 (TBHS 1981, 288; McMurry interview).

     F. E. McMurry and his two oldest sons, George E. and William H. "Mac," planned to buy the dairy with 50% ownership for the father and the other 50% divided between the sons.  George had worked with milk cows and farming in Texas and had learned a great deal about the dairy cattle industry.  After some debate and with their father's approval, the brothers decided to purchase the entire business themselves.  So, in 1943, Mac quit his job at Holloman Air Force Base, and the McMurry brothers became the owners of City Dairy.  Dick Riffe (one of Herb Riffe's sons) remained at the dairy for a while to help during the transition.  He then joined his brother in forming Riffe's Dairy (see section on Later Dairies).  Of the younger two McMurry sons, Kenneth had joined the U. S. Navy, and W. J. "Willie," worked part-time after school and on week-ends.  Kenneth separated from the Navy about 1945 and worked for the Ford garage in Alamogordo.  Willie attended New Mexico State Teachers College until the family ran short of money.  He then worked for the U. S. Forest Service and continued to help with the dairy until 1950 when Kenneth and he bought into the business as full partners.  Even though none of the McMurrys except George had any previous dairy experience, the senior McMurry had been a farmer, so his sons and he were inured to hard work and familiar with milking cows (TBHS 1981:288; NMSBD 1946-47; McMurry interview). [Riffe was still listed as manager in the 1946-47 NMSBD, although that probably only means that the directory was not aware of the change.  The 1950 edition listed "William H. & George E. McMuren (sic)" as proprietors.]

     The business was always family run; the McMurrys hired few hands and frequently worked sixteen hours a day.  If anyone became sick or injured, one of the brothers was forced to cover two jobs until the other returned.  If machinery broke down, everyone pitched in to make repairs and then had to work most of the night to catch up.  Because there was no one to take up the slack, work commenced the next morning as usual (McMurry Interview 1998). [Note that, unless cited, the rest of the chapter is from the McMurry interviw.]
 

Courtesy of Ryal McMurry

     During the World War II era, the McMurrys milked their herd of 50-60 cattle by hand, but after the war they began using milking machines that milked more than one cow at a time.  The milk was channeled into buckets and poured into large dairy cans which were then lifted by hand and emptied into the cooling system to remove the body heat of the cattle.  In 1960, the company built a milking parlor where milk was piped directly from cows into a stainless steel tank and from there into a tank truck for delivery.  Eventually they were able to milk at the rate of 50 cows per hour.  Milking began at 1:00AM and continued until 7:00AM.  The cycle began again at 1:00PM.
 

Alamogordo News, October 12, 1950

     During the period after World War II, business prospered.  Holloman Air Force Base was expanding, and market demands, including those for milk, increased dramatically.  In 1950, City Dairy sold its herd.  The McMurrys had previously bought milk from Tularosa farmers who delivered it in ten-gallon cans.  With the sale of the herd, the brothers relied entirely on local producers and started making and selling ice cream.  At one time, they bought from thirteen other local outlets including Trammel Dairy in Tularosa.  One dairy farmer at Ancho originally shipped his milk to the McMurrys on the daily passenger train and later removed the back seat of an automobile to haul milk cans.  He eventually switched to trucking as storage and shipping methods improved.  Merchants in Lincoln County had been seeking improved sources for dairy service, and, in 1950, City Dairy began delivery to Lincoln County towns six days a week in refrigerator trucks. 
 

City Dairy in the 1950s - [Willie McMurry]

     Although City Dairy originally only bottled raw milk, about 1948, the McMurrys began to pasteurize their milk in 100-gallon and later 300-gallon vats.  A year later (1949), they replaced the vat-type pasteurization with an improved method–short-time, high temperature pasteurization. 
 

[Ryal McMurry]

     City Dairy originally operated a small cream separator but switched to a clarifying/standardizing machine around 1951 or 1952.  The machine broke down globules of fat so that they could not reform and standardized the fat content.  It was basically a larger, more efficient and complex cream separator.  It used stainless steel disks spinning at 8,000 revolutions per minute to separate cream which rose to the top and removed impurities which were forced to the sides of the appliance by centrifugal action.   The New Mexico minimum requirement was 3.25% butter fat; City Dairy usually maintained its milk at 3.4-3.5%.  The brothers marketed some cream locally but sold the excess to Price's Creamery in El Paso to use in producing ice cream.
 

Office and Bottling Area (1998)

     Milk samples were taken once a month and sent to the state laboratory to be checked for bacteria, percent of butter fat, and milk solids.  City Dairy, like its other counterparts throughout the state, had to meet minimum standard requirements in all three areas.  Fortunately, the McMurry's milk always passed the tests.
 

Sign in the Bottling Area

City Dairy Milkshed (1999)	City Dairy Milkshed - Inside (1999)

    In the days before the refrigerator, ice boxes were the norm, and dairies delivered milk twice daily.  After refrigeration became common, delivery was reduced to once per day.  During World War II, when the McMurrys entered the dairy business, a single delivery per day had become the standard, and quart bottles were the most popular size.  The brothers added refrigerated trucks in 1953 and delivered frozen foods to Ruidoso.  Eventually, home delivery was again reduced to three days a week.  One route would be delivered Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, the other, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.  By this time the half-gallon size had become the most popular.  City Dairy continued making home deliveries until the late 1960s when supermarket shopping and improved preservation methods eliminated the need for residential service.
 

One of the McMurry Brothers with a City Dairy delivery truck (ca. 1950s) - Courtesy of Tularosa Basin Historical Society

     The rise of the supermarket produced other problems for local dairies.  Shortly after World War II, City Dairy had relatively little non-local competition.  With sales divided between home delivery and small family grocery stores with limited storage space, a local base of operations was necessary.  The increased capacity of the supermarket allowed a dairy to introduce large quantities of milk at a time, and improved processing and storage life allowed deliveries to become less frequent.  Outside competition in the form of the giant dairies entered the picture.

     To survive the heavy outside competition, the McMurrys began dealing with outside sources.  A farmer's cooperative was started in Portales, New Mexico, and City Dairy became the distributor in Alamogordo for its Grand Champion Jersey Milk.  Clardy's Dairy in Roswell shipped paper cartons of milk to Alamogordo to be sold under City Dairy's brand name.  In a deal with Farmer's Dairy in El Paso, bulk milk and canned milk was distributed by the McMurrys in Alamogordo.

     Price's Dairy was the first to arrive in Alamogordo from El Paso and was later followed by Farmers Dairy and Wholesome Dairy (trucking their products from El Paso) and The Borden Co. (which opened a distribution point in Alamogordo).  Creamland shipped in ice cream from Albuquerque.  Competition was intense.  During the 1960s, a milk price war broke out in Alamogordo.  The large companies began cutting prices, and everyone was forced to radically reduce rates or face greatly diminished sales.  At one point, the retail price of milk dropped to 38¢ per half-gallon, about the amount it cost to produce it.  The McMurrys struggled just to stay in business.

     In 1960 or 1961, City Dairy changed to Breed Milk, the use of only one breed of cattle for milking stock, although they continued to sell regular milk as well.  They chose Jersey cattle because they felt they needed an edge to compete with larger dairies.  Price's Dairy (El Paso) already had Golden Guernsey milk, and it was considered bad taste to have two of the same breed milk types in a single delivery area.  Jersey cattle had been used in the area in the past and were an ideal choice.  Eventually, City Dairy only bought milk from local producers who would run Jersey cows, and some of their old producers sought other markets.  Others made the switch to Jerseys and continued to be a part of the operation.  The brothers bought a new herd that consisted entirely of Jerseys in 1963.  Most of their producers sold their remaining cattle to the McMurrys who only used their own herd for milking stock after that.  Finally the herd swelled to 500 head, allowing the brothers to milk 320 cows per day while the others were in their recovery period.
 

Willie McMurry in 1999

     Despite the outside competition, business was better than ever by 1976, but George and Mac were in their 60s, and the long, 16-hour days were beginning to take their toll.  In addition, because of the nature of milking hours, it was getting more difficult to find help outside the family, and the McMurry brothers decided to offer the dairy for sale in the latter part of the year.  Even though several potential buyer were interested, none of them could raise the large down-payment (the price of the entire herd) required by the McMurrys.  The brothers finally shut down operations in July, 1977, and began selling off the stock and machinery.  Because the herd was composed of good producers, the cattle sold rapidly, and the McMurrys marketed the raw milk to dairies in El Paso until the last cow was sold.  The brothers sold their paper carton machine to Price's Dairy in El Paso and the remaining machinery to various New Mexico dairies and a few in Mexico.  City Dairy was Alamogordo's last locally owned dairy (TBHS 1981:288).
 

Storage and Hay Shed at City Dairy (1999)

     The earliest bottles used by City Dairy were round in cross-section but unmarked, and some sizes remained unmarked throughout the life of the business.  During the 1930s, pressure from large dairies caused city, county, and state ordinances to be passed in many parts of the US to deal with the problem of "strayed bottles."  Because returnable bottles are owned by the companies (in this case dairies), rather than the customers, the restoration of the bottle to the proper owner is expected.  Such ordinances required that each dairy mark its bottles and use only bottles belonging to it (See El Paso Times February 22, 1938 for the 1936 Ordinance in that city).  The earliest marked bottles in Otero County were etched with the company name in script using a hand-held electronic or diamond-tipped etching tool.   In 1946, the McMurrys introduced round bottles with red pyroglazed (painted) labeling and a red line drawing of a cow standing on a patch of green grass on the back of the container.  The brothers ordered a half-railroad car of the bottles as an experiment, but they proved too expensive, and only one batch was ever made.
 

[Willie McMurry]

[Willie McMurry]	[Willie McMurry]

      During the late 1940s, the McMurrys followed the national trend with a change to square (in cross section) quart bottles, rectangular half-gallons, and square gallons.  Although square milk bottles were developed in 1900, but the idea did not catch on until the late 1940s.  (Gallagher 1969:50, 95; Rawlinson 1970:13).   In 1962, City Dairy's half-gallon bottles were pyroglazed with red lettering on a yellow background, but other containers were never marked.  Most of the bottles used by City Dairy bore no company identification.  Sizes offered by that time ranged from half-pints to gallons.  The company sold unmarked round creamers to restaurants and eventually provided square creamers with green pyroglazing that identified the owner as CITY/DAIRY surrounded by a rectangular outline composed of green stippling.

      City Dairy started using waxed paper containers in the late 1960s but bought their cartons from other dairies.  Around 1970, the brothers leased a paper carton machine which created the smaller size containers, but around 1974 or 1975 they purchased a machine that made larger sizes.  The new machine formed half-gallon, three-quart and one-gallon cartons, but the three-quart size was never authorized in New Mexico.  Even though the use of waxed paper containers was initiated for sale in stores, City Dairy also used them for home delivery until residential transport was halted by 1970.

     Because of the shortage of steel during World War II, milk cases (for transportation and delivery of full and empty milk bottles) were built of wood with steel corner braces (earlier cases had been constructed entirely of wood–in 1887, the Thatcher Company catalog described exactly how dairies should construct wooden cartons) (Taylor 1972:99).  When steel once again became available, cases were made from heavy-gauge steel wire, but the older wooden cases continued to be used for square half-pints.  Steel wire was also used to make baskets or carrying cases for milk delivery.  These devices held anywhere between four and eight containers and allowed a deliveryman to more easily carry milk from the truck (or wagon) to the customer's door.  Although wire baskets for delivery were used at least as early as 1887 (Taylor 1972:97), the design had changed little by the end of home delivery in 1970.
 

      Plastic became the common case material after dairies began to use paper containers.  The combination of paper and plastic weighed much less and allowed the larger dairies to ship greater volumes of milk at lower prices.  Carriers, used by route men for home delivery, were made from steel frames with aluminum bands to contain the bottles and originally held eight quart bottles.  Later carriers held four half-gallon bottles plus four quarts, and the final carriers held four half-gallons.

      The McMurrys generally bought their bottles from Owens Illinois Glass Co. and once (the 1946 pyroglazed bottles) split an order with one of the El Paso dairies to save shipping costs.  City Dairy generally purchased new bottles about twice a year, and they were shipped in by truck.  Along with the other dairies, City Dairy charged a deposit for glass containers sold through grocery stores.  Home delivery worked a little differently, however.  A home delivery customer was expected to return a number of empties equal to the number of full bottles he or she ordered.  Often, both the bottles and the wood-and-steel carrying cases disappeared.  Route men often observed the cases being used to prop up automobiles and the bottles collecting the oil drained from the crank case.  A charge for missing bottles was added to the bill.

      Sometimes cleaning the bottles presented a problem, especially when the container had been reused to collect oil or other hard-to-remove substances.  Bottles had initially been washed by hand, a less efficient process but one that helped increase bottle longevity.  When bottle washing machines were introduced, the caustic solution (much stronger than that which could be used in hand washing) would etch into the glass after repeated washings.  Improved cleaning efficiency resulted in shorter bottle life.

     The company also furnished recieving boxes for its regular customers.  These were made of inuslated aluminum to help keep milk from spoiling in the summer or freezing in the winter.  They were marked with the City Dairy name.
 

     Although there may have been some older bottles etched with the City Dairy name, the first known marked bottle was labeled with the pyroglaze technique.  It is very unusual among New Mexico pyroglazed bottles in that it is bichromatic, using red and green colors.  One half-railroad-car of bottles were ordered in 1946, but they proved to be too expensive, and the dairy used unmarked, round bottles until the 1960s.