Life never stands still.  After I completed my work on the Alamogordo soda bottling industry, I intended to return to El Paso for its dairy industry.  Then I realized that 1999 was the Otero County, New Mexico, centennial year, so I changed my aim to Otero County dairies and discovered that I had to learn a whole new method for researching rural and small town dairies.  Neither city nor state directories were much help, and newspaper stories were few. 

     No history is ever complete, and any history of local dairies will remain notably incomplete due to lack of documentation of early businesses, and the transitory nature of small dairies.  A lone farmer with a single cow could list himself in a newspaper or city directory as a dairy.  Similarly, a medium or large concern may remain totally undocumented in the historic record.  The following history of Otero County dairies is pieced together from newspaper ads, city directory listings,  New Mexico Business Directory listings, and a long interview with Willie McMurry, former partner in Alamogordo's City Dairy.  A great deal of information is missing, but the data I have gathered presents a reasonable look at the progression of Otero County dairies from the first recorded dairy in 1889 (Barrett's Jersey Dairy, Cloudcroft) to the closing of City Dairy (Alamogordo) in 1977.

     This brings up a problem with historiography.  Because records of early businesses in Otero County (as in most of the US) were poorly kept, much of the information on the dairy business must be gleaned from early newspapers.  While these advertisements provide an excellent source of information, we gain only a few small pieces of an otherwise large puzzle.  A single example will illustrate.  Mrs. C. F. Barrett first advertised in the Cloudcroft Silver Lining of June 4, 1904 (6:6).  It was not until 1915, however, that the Barretts informed us in an ad that Barrett's Jersey Dairy was established in 1889!  With typical advertisements as the only source, Barrett's would have been listed as starting in 1904–fifteen years after the actual inception of the business.  The reader should be aware that the dates given in this history may be somewhat inaccurate due to similar discrepancies between known dates of advertisements and unknown dates when specific dairies actually began to conduct business.