raw · papers · ingested 2026-07-26
El Paso Dairies: Mistletoe Creamery and Dairy League — Three Rivers Glass Milk Bottles (Bill Lockhart, El Paso Dairies series)
Source: https://secure-sha.org/bottle/pdffiles/ElPasoDairies/Chapter11-SmallDairiesLater.pdf
- Source URL: https://secure-sha.org/bottle/pdffiles/ElPasoDairies/Chapter11-SmallDairiesLater.pdf
- Ingested: 2026-07-26
- Note: This is a focused excerpt. The full chapter (“Chapter 11 — Small Dairies and Creameries 1920-1940s,” Bill Lockhart) covers many El Paso-area dairies; only the two Three Rivers Glass-relevant firms plus standing context are extracted here. In the pdftotext extraction the Three Rivers star symbol renders as a lowercase “p” (symbol-font artifact); it is transcribed below as in the extraction, with [star] glosses.
Mistletoe Creamery (El Paso, 1922-1932) — confirmed Three Rivers customer
Company history: The firm “began as the Nissley Creamery at Fort Worth, Texas, in 1901, and Nissley advertised Mistletoe Butter by at least 1916. In 1920, the firm reorganized as Mistletoe Creameries, Inc., and opened branches at Amarillo, Dallas, and Houston (Grobe 1922:320; Lee & Fieldman 1922:[2]).”
Mistletoe Creamery opened a branch at Des Moines, New Mexico, in 1921 and spread to El Paso the following year. By the time it ceased business in 1932, it had operated in 14 communities in New Mexico, at least six (Amarillo, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, Houston, and the San Antonio/Austin area) in Texas, and a few farther east. Mistletoe spread to Albuquerque in 1922, Clayton in 1924, a cream station at Mills in 1926, Clovis in 1927, and both Artesia and Portales in 1929.
In El Paso, Mistletoe was at 322 Mills in 1923, later 2222 Texas St., and was last listed in 1932 (EPCD 1925-1932). Lockhart notes the Great Depression plus competition from Price’s/Desert Gold and Hawkins Dairy as causes of the demise, and flags the mystery of a new $80,000 plant groundbreaking at 2216 Myrtle Ave. in March 1932 just as the firm vanished from the record.
The Three Rivers bottles:
I have never heard of a Mistletoe Creamery bottle found in an El Paso context, but Smith (1989:54) illustrated quart and half-pint bottles made for the firm by the Three Rivers Glass Co. Most of the Mistletoe bottles, including one in the author’s collection, lacked any form of local address (probably because of the numerous locations) but had “Mistletoe” embossed in a slight upward slant on the front and had the older style Dacro finish (Figure 11-2). The author’s bottle was embossed “3 RIVERS p” [3 RIVERS (star)] with a “28” date code on the front heel.
Date-code note: the “28” (1928) date code on a Three Rivers bottle directly contradicts Lockhart’s statement in Bottles on the Border Chapter 9b that “Three Rivers never used date codes.”
Elephant Butte Dairy League (El Paso, 1931-1933) — confirmed Three Rivers customer
Company history: “The Elephant Butte Dairy League was formed as a Texas corporation at some point during early 1931 with a capital of $60,000. F.A. Reedy was the League president, with Edwin B. Link as general manager… The firm began the distribution of milk from its new plant at 301 S. Campbell on July 1 of that year.” In August 1931 it reorganized as the Elephant Butte Dairy and Produce Co. (the dairy segment kept the original name). “On June 1, 1933, the El Paso Dairy League announced that it was in the dissolution process,” selling its routes and goodwill to Price’s Desert Gold Dairy.
The Three Rivers bottle:
Because the Elephant Butte Dairy League was in business for such a short time (1931-1933), its bottles are rare today. An eBay auction offered a half-pint round milk bottle embossed in a round plate on the front with “DAIRY LEAGUE (arch) / PHONE M 95 (horizontal) / EL PASO (inverted arch)” – the only example I have ever seen (Figure 11-12). The front shoulder was embossed “ONE HALF PINT / LIQUID (horizontal),” and the front heel roll was marked “32 3RIVERS p 7.” [32 3RIVERS (star) 7] The ejection scar is also incised with “32” – a certain date code. There was no other “League” listed in the El Paso city directories, so the bottle must have belonged to Elephant Butte.
Date-code note: “a certain date code” of 1932 on a Three Rivers milk bottle — second independent contradiction of the “never used date codes” claim.
The chapter’s references list includes: Smith, Michael David, 1989, Texas Glass: An Illustrated History of the Three Rivers Glass Company 1922-1937, Atwood Printing, New Braunfels, Texas.