Luck Creamery Company | Wisconsin Historical Society

Historical Essay

Luck Creamery Company

Luck Creamery Company | Wisconsin Historical Society

Hwy. 35, Luck, Polk County 

On March 28, 1885 one of Wisconsin's first incorporated creameries was organized as the Luck Creamery Company. The "Organization Artikler" were published in Danish in the Polk County Press on November 18, 1885, and printed in English about a month later on December 12. The seven Danish emigrants declared that only members of the corporation could own stock in it, and the sale of one hun­dred sixty shares at $15 per share was authorized. The first creamery was built eight-tenths of a mile west of here on the north shore of Little Butternut Lake. The first buttermaker was a Danish woman who made the butter in large wooden churns. In the early days the farmers brought their milk to the creamery in cans which had glass tubes or gauges on the side, marked down to one-eighth inches. The cream as shown by the gauge was measured and paid for by the inch. The cream was then skimmed off and the farmer kept the skimmed milk. Many groups of farmers adopted the cooperative principle to make dairying a leading industry in Wisconsin.

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[Source: McBride, Sarah Davis. History Just Ahead (Madison:WHS, 1999).]