Sitting on the fringes of urban sprawl in Chino sit the remains of this once prosperous dairy farm. Here lie the remains of 3 nice ranch style homes on it, a milking parlor, and various garages + sheds, it has decayed and been vandalized into dire straits. Its hard for me to believe the homes here were occupied as recently as May 2018 according to google maps and street view. The dairy seems to have been last functional around 2009. Seems like the residents moved out pretty quickly and left quite a bit of stuff save some personal artifacts like most clothes, photos and records. Fridge and freezer was left full. Pretty sad considering this entire place in its heyday was clearly a token of pride and hard work.
I divided this into two trips because I ran out of daylight on the first. I parked in a nearby subdivision and biked to the location, I actually lost my car key on the road on the first trip and had to search for it for an hour in the dark. That was actual fun.
Images: I will post images but here are links to each section of the property:
Main house:
https://drive.goog...a_-tVo?usp=sharingMilking parlor:
https://drive.goog...6Bxip5?usp=sharing"House 2":
https://drive.goog...M8nquMsql5exjHsoXJ"House 3":
https://drive.goog...Rs1D4_?usp=sharing This image details the entire property. You have the main house on the far left, moving to the right you have a pole barn & garage, and then the milking parlor, to the right is another pole barn and houses 2 & 3, where workers once lived.
Here is the main house I'll start with that one:
You come in and are met with a entry with a marble floor and a planter with a carpeted living room to the left with the drapes still hanging:
To the right of the entry way is the kitchen. Youll see this neat banquette where I can imagine some hearty meals were ate before a long early morning of dairying:
Here's the other side of the kitchen:
"Do not open" but open I did...didn't smell too great:
Going through the kitchen you'll go past a walk-in pantry and come into this funky room that used to have a sliding glass door on one end I think was a breeze way at one point:
In the breeze way is a inlaid slate "R" denoting the original dairying family who built this property, the Rodrigues' they moved out long ago and a different set of owners began working the property:
Off the breezeway room is what local vandals have deemed "the sex room" for the oversize mattress found in it:
Off the same breezeway room is this family room area. Vandals have had fires in the fireplace. There is a case of almost new water bottles in there too. I think that built in TV console is REALLY groovy:
File_189 I found a christmas tree out on the covered patio's remains out back and had to get it into the christmas spirit! (I also hung some lights from the front of the house before leaving):
This post is getting reeeeaally long so ima end it and try to continue on with more photos in a separate post. But here is some history of the area that I have done some research on.
This region was once home to many dairy farms such as this one. The history of the Inland Empire as a dairy production center dates back to the 1930's - but really took off in 1967 when San Bernardino County designated 14,000 acres of land as an agricultural preserve. The dairies, most of which have been operated by Dutch, Portuguese and Basque families, were already operating dairy farms in nearby Artesia, Cypress, La Palma area until the post WWII era. At which time the land the dairies sat on became valuable and began fleeing the growing sprawl of Los Angeles to the Chino, Ontario, Eastvale, area.
The area offered a flat, sandy-loamy soils where the dairies could be close together for economic reasons, to continue their cultural traditions whilst supplying an adequate amount of milk to a growing population of Los Angeles. This also allowed the dairymen a chance to enlarge and upgrade their dairying operations from what they held in the Artesia area. By 1980, the area had more cows per acre and a higher milk yield than anywhere else in the world.
Now history is sadly repeating itself evidently as many of the dairies which gave this community its unique rural character – are razed. And those which don’t close up shop completely move far away to places like Idaho, Central California, Oregon and Colorado. In their place spring up the houses, shopping centers, and warehouses. The land which these dairies sit is simply too valuable and neighbors (who often object to dairying associated smells and flies) move closer.
Looking around google maps it is easy to see how this once pastoral landscape is quickly being transformed into a sprawling metropolis. One can easily differentiate the few remaining open areas where dairies are still located from the areas that are becoming densely built-up. You can see the city pushing in like a tide of buildings and roads. That in fact, is how I found this location.
Highlighting this is when one browses the satellite images on google maps, you’ll find areas that were once clearly agricultural but now have overlays of road names, and when you select street view - you are met with images of a boring subdivision or a distribution warehouse. In some cases, I see roads gone or rerouted. The pace of development in this area has moved so fast that it is exceeding the rate at which google maps can update. Street view has demonstrated itself as a useful tool in preserving images of the dairies in this area.
I hope you enjoyed seeing the images I captured on this gloomy December day and hopefully reading the brief history lesson about the area.