east was Monterey Road and to the west was Murphy Lane, today ' s Santa Teresa Boulevard, and the Soilis Rancho.
San Jose and to Alviso for shipment to San Francisco. The arrival of the railroad in 1869 had a dramatic impact on the ability of Gilroy dairymen to transport their milk products through the Carnadero, Miller, and Rucker train stations. The same was true for the shipments of beef cattle to the stockyards of South San Francisco. Shortridge described the Bloomfield Dairy as a " model operation with nothing lacking— excellent pasturage, nutritious feed grains including alfalfa, and plentiful water."
The keen water management skills of Henry Miller led to the initial engineering of the Miller Slough. Flood waters were channeled away from the northern outskirts of Gilroy, providing some protection for the growing downtown area. The Miller Slough is actually the West Branch of Llagas Creek. Today it travels through the agricultural fields of LJB Farms and the former Blaettler Dairy.
Two years before both brothers passed in 1945, the Blaettler men celebrated when they were able to pay off the bank and burned the $ 35,000 mortgage paper. The Blaettler brothers’ story is not unique, as families from Ireland, Switzerland, the Azore Islands, Italy, for example, experienced many hardships in order to survive the economic turmoil of the Great Depression and two World Wars. The Blaettler ' s thought about building a cheese factory but decided to sell their fluid milk to Borden which had a daily pick-up route that brought the raw milk to a creamery for processing. The dairy was operated until 1965 when the land was sold for an intended development which never occurred. John Blaettler recalled the constant strenuous labor that was necessary to milk 200 Holstein cows twice a day, to farm the corn and hay to supplement the cows grass-fed diet, and the daily " mucking out " of the milking barn. The two grain silos were built in 1935 and are still standing. Today the Blaettler Dairy is farmed for row crops.
The Miller Red Barn at Christmas Hill Park has enjoyed the support of the Blaettler family. An interpretive panel inside the renovated barn tells the history of the cattle business, both beef and dairy, that have been an integral part of our local heritage over the years. Truly, we all have earned the right to be proud of our agricultural roots.
Traveling on Day Road East and looking to the north, the legacy of two brothers from Switzerland is still apparent. In 1917, the cattle grazing lands once owned by the Murphy family of San Martin and Morgan Hill, were purchased by the Blaettler family. Two brothers, Melchior( Mike) and Peter arrived in America in 1881, working their way across the country and settling in California in 1888. Nearly 30 years of various dairying jobs finally allowed the family to acquire a 200-acre parcel. At the outset, Mike and Peter Blaettler with their families lived in the same small house. The property is located at the very southern boundary of Rancho Las Llagas where it meets Rancho Las Animas. To the
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