Foothill Dairy, Azusa Canyon

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The Foothill Dairy.  The above photograph is from the Lefty Woodside Collection, reprinted here with permission from Nancy Woodside.  

Have heard nothing about the owners of the farm or dairy, when they sold or where they moved to, but today you can see lots and lots of townhomes, beautiful I might say, up againt the foothills now.  

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The farm and dairy operations both were located on the east side of Highway 39 at the foot of Beatty Canyon where you can see the pipeline run down from Glendora Ridge Mountain Way.  On the west side of Hwy 39 stood the VFW and the fish farm, Happy Jacks, owned by the Cocoran Brothers and located about where the Church of Latter Day Saints sits today.   Here is a 1997 LA Times article about Azusa Canyon that you might find interesting.

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Dairy cows gaze out of wooden pens at the Foothill Dairy at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains in Azusa.

from Calisphere:

Herman J. Schultheis was born in Aachen, Germany in 1900, and immigrated to the United States in the mid-1920s after obtaining a Ph.D. in mechanical and electrical engineering. He married Ethel Wisloh in 1936, and the pair moved to Los Angeles the following year. He worked in the film industry from the late 1930s to the mid-1940s, most notably on the animated features Fantasia and Pinocchio. His detailed notebook, documenting the special effects for Fantasia, is the subject of a 14-minute short-subject included on the film’s DVD. In 1949, he started employment with Librascope as a patent engineer. Schultheis was an avid amateur photographer who traveled the world with his cameras. It was on one of these photographic exhibitions in 1955 that he disappeared in the jungles of Guatemala. His remains were discovered 18 months later. The digitized portion of this collection represents the images Schultheis took of Los Angeles and its surrounding communities after he relocated to the area in 1937.

2 thoughts on “Foothill Dairy, Azusa Canyon

  1. Wonderful to see these pics, thanks so much for sharing. My father was Ray Piper, manager of the Foothill Dairy Ranch in Lancaster. He had worked most of his life at the Azusa Dairy for his longtime childhood friend, Wilfred Schlange. I went to school with the Schlange kids briefly before we moved to the Antelope Valley ranch. Many of the employees were of German descent, as were Wilfred and father, “Willy” and Mrs. Schlange, the property founders. They were wonderful, fair, and caring employers I remember…especially at the annual Christmas party, always held at the VFW (or Moose or Elk?) Hall across the highway!
    Gail Piper Yancey
    Colorado Springs, CO

    1. Bill Wood

      Wilfred Schlange was a great guy. I met Wilfred in 1984 through my wife, who knew Wilfred’s second wife Barbara. We became best of friends right away.. One of his loves were flying his airplane. I had the pleasure of meeting his Mother, a beautiful German woman. I miss my friendship with Wilfred…..Bill Wood

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