Uncover Orange County, NY's role in the American consumer use of fluid milk. While many may speculate that these dairy products were solely popular due to the region’s superior agricultural landscape, history has instead shown that Orange County stood at the forefront of transporting and marketing fluid milk in the nineteenth century.
Three individuals, situated in or closely tied to Orange County, were especially instrumental in this creamy saga: Erie Railroad station agent Thaddeus Selleck who first shipped milk by rail in 1842, milk can pioneer, Jacob Vail, and the early milk bottle user Alexander Campbell. The results of their efforts gave birth to the golden age of Orange County’s agriculture–one that fueled over 4,000 farms of all kinds by 1884 and kept dairy farms prospering into the mid-twentieth century.
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