Creamery and dairy store: Keystone, 1892; Burger Dairy, by 1974

1892–2003 · the milk course, at the record's two strengths

The township's milk found its town institutions early and late: the St. Joseph County Independent of 23 April 1892 notes, in its local columns, that the Keystone Creamery "was started up last week" at Walkerton — a creamery working in town by the spring of 1892, taking the surrounding farms' cream at the railroad. The beat is flagged's note to the farms pass as well; the creamery's own course beyond its start-up is a named gap below. The twentieth century's dairy institution was a chain store: a Burger Dairy stood in Walkerton by January 1974 — proven at case-record strength, as the Burger Dairy from which the Pearish abduction began (the Crime leg carries the case; the store's presence is this section's fact). The chain's course, from the Farmer's Exchange's bicentennial dairy series of June 2016, runs whole at that telling's strength: begun in 1919 as the New Paris Cooperative Creamery, producing butter and dry powder; Jim Burger its manager from 1934; the convenience-store concept pioneered under him — the first Burger Dairy store at Goshen in 1953, growing to more than seventy stores across northern Indiana, Michigan and Ohio, the first to sell milk in gallon jugs, and at its height one of Indiana's largest milk processors; sold by Bob Burger in 1987 to Finevest Foods, the store chain sold off separately, the company sold four more times, and the plant closed in 2003 under National Dairy Holdings. When Walkerton's store itself closed does not appear in the record reached; the chain's trade record belongs to Businesses, where this course is flagged for its whole treatment.

Sources:

1. St. Joseph County Independent, 23 April 1892 (the Keystone Creamery started up) — the paper of record, OCR at transcription strength.
2. The Crime leg of this build (the Burger Dairy at Walkerton, January 1974, at case-record strength).
3. Farmer's Exchange, 17 June 2016, "Burger Dairy the First to Sell Milk in Gallon Jugs" (the New Paris cooperative of 1919; Goshen 1953; seventy-plus stores; the 1987 sale; the 2003 closing).