Friday, August 22, 2014

Christopher Dairy Farms Artifacts


Recently, I was lucky to be spend some time at the San Francisco Public Library archives and started to look at some of the artifacts from Christopher Milk which was the producer of milk in San Francisco until they were bought out by Berkeley Farms in 1970. What was cool to me was looking at the different promotional items:

An ad for Christopher Milk
A Christopher Dairy Farm Calendar
An ad for 49ers tickets 
A Christopher Milk shopping cart ad
A Christopher Dairy Farm ruler from the 50's
Some Christopher Milk cartons
Drink Christopher Milk and get free 49er tickets
Holiday Greetings
Learn first aid on a milk carton
They were a huge sponsor of the San Francisco Jr. Giants in the 60's (above and below):

And then in 1970, they were sold and became part of Berkeley Farms:


Cartoon about them being sold
It was really cool to see and learn about a huge part of Bay Area history.

10 comments:

  1. never even knew about christopher milk. very interesting. love berkeley farms.

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  2. This was the milk that was delivered to all of the schools in SF. Dairy was located at 555 Fulton St.

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  3. I don't remember Christopher Dairy Farms, but I do remember the one and only Niner game I went to sitting in the Berkeley Farms Junior 49er club section with my friends.

    These artifacts are so much fun. Thanks for sharing on #FridayFrivolity

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  4. I have a Christopher Dairy Farms ruler. I don't know where I got it, but it was interesting looking up the information on it.

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  5. Going through some of moms things after she passed,I ran across a Christopher Dairy Farms ruler,in her desk drawer,down in Gilroy. I chuckled,then sighed,a bit when it said on one side "In the new sensational plastic carton"...if they only new the problems to come......

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  6. I would love to find the commercial. My husband and his siblings sang in it.

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  7. Anonymous above is correct. Christopher is the milk all SF Unified School District kids got. It came in little, flat-top, waxed paper, pint cartons with a waxed paper stopper over the opening in one corner of the top.

    The paper was heavily waxed, and it was a kid thing to scrape it off with fingernails.

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  8. After the World War Two, my grandparents wanted to help out the returning service men. George Christopher had returned from service and was starting up his own business, Christopher Dairies, by going door to door. They hired him to deliver bottles of milk to the front porch three, or four, times a week. In those days the cream would be at the top, filling the neck of the bottle, and it would have to be shaken to mix it. You did your own homogenizing. You could have cream delivered as well, but, if you couldn't afford it, you could always scoop some off the top of the milk. In 1956, George Christopher would become the Mayor of San Francisco -- my mom remembers the family voting for him. We still have a couple of the old Christopher Dairies glass bottles. Mitch

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