The Milk Farm, Dixon, California, 1960
Everybody loves it when a cow jumps over the moon. But we love it even more when it’s a neon cow jumping over a neon moon perched high-in-the-sky on an erector set platform on the roof of a ranch-style roadside restaurant. Looks like she might even be a tail wagger! I’m sure the ‘59 Chrysler, ’55 Mercury, ’57 Chevy and Ford pickup are enjoying the view from the front row.
According to the long and narrow signage, hamburgers, hot dogs, steaks and fried chicken may be on the menu here, but milk is definitely the main course. It’s all-you-can-drink for 10 cents. If you really like leche you can enter their famous “Who-can-drink-the-most” contest. Win or lose, don’t forget to smell your way back to the pasture to meet and marvel at the milk makers. Cows and restaurants go so well together!
The Milk Farm originated in 1928. In 1986 it closed after, according to the legend, the wind huffed and puffed and blew a big ‘ol hole in the roof. In 2000, what was left of the building was dismantled and put into storage with hopes that someday the Milk Farm would be resurrected.
Today, only the luna hoppin’ Holstein still stands on the property where it serves as an unofficial, yet beloved local landmark.
If the day ever comes when the Milk Farm moos again, I’ll be the first one in line for the milk-drinking contest. Unless your lactose intolerant, or even if you are, I hope you can be there when they plug in the neon cow so we can all be over the moon when she jumps the neon moon once again!
Here’s to the cow, the milk, the Milk Farm and YOU!
Charles Phoenix
May 17, 2011
Los Angeles, CA
The small sign, the one that was on top of the restaurant, survives as well. Stand with your back to the big sign, and look towards the cow pasture on the other side of Milk Farm Road, and you will see it sitting on the ground by a neighbor’s barn.
This was a landmark on the way to Sacramento.
My senior high school field trip included a stop there.
Where is Dixon, CA? I love all the little “tourist traps” as my Dad used to call them on the U.S. Highways. He didn’t want to stop at them because my brother and I would want to buy some treasure (or piece of junk) and he hated spending money. If the trap was a restaurant, my brother and I would run into the gift shop while my parents paid the bill after our meal. Oh, the memories of the long drives to the midwest to visit relatives: my brother and I fighting over our space in the car and who was on whose side of the seam of the vinyl upholstery of the back seat of the car, playing catch with Dad’s favorite straw hat with the windows open because it was so hot and he wouldn’t turn the air conditioner on since it would overheat the engine; and having the straw hat blow out the window on the highway at 65 miles per hour and hearing Dad yell at us for not using our heads! Wow, what memories of the road trips of the 60′s!
Ohhh, I just know that’s one of those places with a gift shop that had all sorts of puzzle toys, erasers in novelty shapes, t-shirts, mugs, jars of local honey, dippy birds, postcards and quaint carved wooden objects. The kind of place that I would look around longingly while waiting for the food to come.
SO glad you did a piece on the Milk Farm! We stopped there in the ’70s on every trip from San Francisco to Reno & Lake Tahoe. Such great memories. Anyone remember the animated characters “the dish ran away with the spoon” inside the restaurant? After it closed it sat vacant through the ’90s with the signage intact. My sister and I broke through a hole in the chain link fence that surrounded the property at the time and I photographed the remains of the interior of the restaurant. So sad to see it in that state. I haven’t been back that way in many years. Glad to hear the truly enormous sign is still standing beside I-80!
I’m there for the milk drinking contest too. And that’s real milk by the way. None of your nonfat/lowfat nonsense. And don’t even think about giving me any soy milk either. I want some good pasturized, homogenized (or as I used to call when I was little, homosized) milk.