Do you know the story of L.A.’s milk shed? Long before that famous jingle “Yes Cerritos Auto Square!” took over the crevices of our subconscious, the city of Cerritos was famous for a much different reason: dairy.
Southern California was huge in the industry, primarily in L.A. County. But rising urbanization threatened the farmers’ way of life, who were increasingly being pushed out of their towns. That’s why some came up with an odd idea that mirrored West L.A.’s circus town: form a city to save the cows.
Farmers band together
Before Southern California became today’s urban sprawl, the land was mostly full of agriculture. Among those cropfields were hundreds of dairy farms. There were so many in L.A. County that it earned a reputation as being the biggest “cow county” in the nation.
The urbanization and housing boom here after World War II forced a lot of dairies to move. Growth was hard to escape, though. As development surged, so did land values, which gave subdividers the edge they needed to force dairy farmers out.
City encroachment was also a problem. L.A., Long Beach and other cities were expanding fast, and they had zoning laws that prioritized tract housing and business development over agriculture…