Historic Photo: An ‘Up to Date’ New Glarus Dairy
A postcard mailed from New Glarus in 1912 captures a prosperous dairy farm, dozens of cattle and even an early automobile at a moment when Green County’s booming cheese industry was transforming farms — and New Glarus itself.
There is something tantalizingly familiar about the farm in this photograph.
The contours of the hills, the arrangement of the farm buildings, the two houses and the wooded ridges behind them all look like they could still be somewhere just outside New Glarus. Yet despite studying the photograph, we have not been able to confidently determine exactly where this farm stood — or perhaps still stands in a much-altered form.
Maybe one of our readers can.
What we do know is that the photograph is a remarkable portrait of rural New Glarus at one of the most important moments in the agricultural history of the community. Across the pasture, someone has written directly onto the image: “AN UP TO DATE DAIRY GREEN CO. WIS.”
And in 1912, “up to date” meant something.
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