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Dairy on the Prairie 27
The Diamond Creamery in Monticello was a much housed the weigh room, separa- Diamond Creamery at its peak. Courtesy of State His-
more significant operation in Jones County. It was tors, the cream room, and the torical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.
built in 1875 by Henry D. Sherman, with the Diamond main office. The basement was
Creamery Company eventually operating other used for packaging and the fi- creameries. The introduction of bulk tanks enabled
creameries and cheese factories in the county includ- nal sealing of the butter tins. farmers to ship their milk long distances, and large
ing the Ross Cheese Factory. The Diamond Creamery centralized processing plants began to displace the
was the first commercial creamery built in Jones Coun- There was also a large vat neighborhood creamery.102
ty and was reportedly the second built in the state. room which was heated with
(The first creamery was the Spring Branch Creamery steam, a runway and loading The early twentieth century creamery buildings
built in 1872 by John Stewart and his partner, Mat- chute, boiler rooms, and a were more fire-proof than the old wood buildings but
thew Van Deusen, near Manchester, Iowa, in Dela- well and pump located just off they also provided a more sanitary and sterile envi-
ware County.) The Diamond Creamery expanded in the main building. Nearby ronment in which to manufacture butter, cheese, and
1877, adding steam power. In 1878, the company be- stood the ice house and in other milk products, such as ice cream. These new
gan manufacturing skim milk cheese, with the butter back of that a cold storage buildings were typically one-story in height and were
now vacuum-packed in tin containers. Diamond plant.101 built of brick, tile, or concrete blocks. Designs includ-
Creamery butter was renowned and was distributed ed simple utilitarian types with little stylistic influ-
to an international market. It was also supplied to the According to the 1893 plat ence, while others reflected popular architectural
U.S. Army and Navy for a number of years. The book for Jones County, there styles of the day such as Craftsman and Bungalow.
creamery was expanded again in 1881 with an infu- were then at least 44 creameries in operation includ- Because of their masonry construction and adaptabil-
sion of capital from Simpson, McIntyre & Co. of Bos- ing two in Cascade just over the county line. Of the 44 ity to other uses, these second-generation creamery
ton, Massachusetts, who had an interest in the creameries, two were labeled as cheese factories, with buildings have survived in greater numbers across the
Diamond Creamery from its inception. By 1887, the the remainder labeled as creameries. Every town and Iowa landscape. At least five of these buildings are
company had 27 creameries under its control. Some small settlement in the county boasted of its own present in Jones County alone including creameries
of these outlying creameries were converted to skim creamery, although many of them were being oper-
stations at which the milk was received from the farm- ated by the Diamond Creamery Company of Monti-
er and the cream separated for shipment to the main cello. The north half of the county had 64% of the
plant in Monticello to be manufactured into butter. creameries, with nine clustered along the old Military
When hand separators became common on local farms Road between Anamosa and Cascade.
in the early 1900s, cream routes were established, with
the cream collected at the farms, hauled to a shipping As the dairy industry moved into the twentieth cen-
point, and delivered in refrigerated railroad cars to tury, mechanization and new sanitation standards
the central plant in Monticello. The Diamond Cream- resulted in the replacement of most of the older cream-
ery Company incorporated in 1907; however, the ery buildings with masonry buildings. Until the mid-
creamery came to an abrupt end in 1915 when the twentieth century, nearly every community in
main building burned to the ground. It was not re- northeast and north-central Iowa had its own cream-
built, although the Farmers Mutual Creamery Com- ery co-operative. Around the turn of the century,
pany had a large plant built in 1897 in Monticello that creameries were so prevalent that in the dairying re-
continued to operate until 1967.100 gion of the state each county had several, located in
towns as well as rural townships, and in many in-
Built of wood, the two-story Diamond Creamery stances the neighborhood creamery served as the com-
housed a tin shop on the second floor where the but- munity's post office and general store as well. By the
ter tins were cut and manufactured. The main floor 1960s, the change in how farmers marketed their dairy
products sparked consolidation among the state's
