August 18, 2025
For decades, the area to the north of the Downtown core has featured a distinct industrial vibe. In the area roughly bound by Broadway, I-40, Fourth, and Lomas, you can still find all manner of warehouse, storage facility, and auto shop. But among the large battery vendors and medical waste sterilization and incineration facilities are multiple buildings and lots belonging to Creamland Dairy, one of the most recognizable brand names in New Mexico. There’s a reason for that: Creamland was born right here, just north of Albuquerque’s Downtown, in a time when the area was more focused on agricultural pursuits.
The oldest major artifact of Creamland’s history in the area is the lollipop-like sign at the southwest corner of Second and McKnight, which has marked this as Dairy Territory since 1948. But Creamland’s story starts even earlier, during a time when what is now Wells Park and the Near North Valley was home to the likes of Bezemek’s Dairy, Harry Seebiner’s Dairy, Poplar Dairy, Boddy’s Jersey Farm, and Model Dairy – just to name a few.
As the twentieth century dawned and Albuquerque’s population expanded, the milk business grew more competitive. Automation promised to give some farmers an edge but remained financially out of reach for most individual operations. So in 1921, 12 small dairy owners – including J.P. Jacobsen, Model Farm Dairy’s Clarence Christ, Frederic Mann, James L. Phillips and Hugh Bowers – joined forces to purchase a bottle-washing machine and subsequently formed the Albuquerque Co-Operative Dairy Association.
The team successfully conquered the local market, and in 1938, Holstein rancher and Albuquerque businessman Albert G. Simms – for whom the Simms Building at Fourth and Gold is named – purchased the cooperative and renamed it Creamland Dairies, Inc. Soon after, he set up an ice cream plant at 500 Broadway SW – the now-vacant corrugated metal building that dominates the southeast corner of Lead and Broadway and nods to its history with a pastel mural depicting a lively soda fountain. At its height, the factory produced 2.5 million gallons of Creamland and Fitzgerald’s ice cream a year.
Albert Simms died in 1964, and Creamland chugged along for another decade and a half as an independent and still relatively small entity. But in 1978, Illinois-based Dean Foods purchased the company on its way to becoming America’s largest producer of milk. It held that distinction for decades until 2020, when Dean Foods itself was acquired by the Dairy Farmers of America, a national cooperative.
As an Albuquerque-based company, Creamland is long gone, but its remnants are everywhere. First and foremost, it survives as a brand name in New Mexico grocery stores, with its ubiquitous jugs of milk and local obsessions like green chile sour cream dip plentifully represented in just about every dairy section. Long after the small dairies that formed it faded away and shuttered their doors one by one, the working infrastructure of the cooperative they formed still populates Wells Park.
Outside of Greater Downtown, the most visible remnant is probably Airabelle the cow, the Creamland mascot who has her own special shapes balloon. She is both a fixture of the Balloon Fiesta and a reminder of the local business that grew from 12 farmers and a bottle-washing machine more than a century ago.
—By Ty Bannerman
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