Robbinsdale’s dairy history is tied closely to its early development as a working-class suburb on the edge of Minneapolis, where nearby farms, creameries, and milk routes were just part of everyday life.
One of the earliest pieces of that system was a creamery built in the 1920s on Ernest Shumway’s land at 4218 West Broadway. Around the same time, the Twin City Milk Producers Association expanded its regional network, and in 1921 Robbinsdale hosted a major celebration for the opening of a new milk station. Farmers from nearby communities like Corcoran, Hamel, and Osseo were treated to speeches, band music, sports, and entertainment—basically a civic festival built around the serious business of getting milk to Minneapolis.
By the mid-1930s, the site at 4218 West Broadway was operating as Johnson Brothers Dairy. Like many small dairies of the era, it couldn’t survive the economic strain of the Great Depression. In 1939, A.M. “Art” Berg purchased the business and established Purity Dairy, continuing the property’s role as a local processing and distribution hub.
Berg’s story mirrors the story of the dairy industry itself. Born in Wisconsin, he came to Minneapolis with his family in 1908. After leaving school in eighth grade, he began delivering milk by horse-drawn wagon for Metropolitan Milk Company in 1916. Later, he worked for Franklin Creamery, attended agricultural courses at the University of Minnesota to learn butter and ice cream making, and rose to become superintendent of the creamery in 1932. In 1939, he struck out on his own, opening Purity Dairy at the corner of 42nd and West Broadway in Robbinsdale.
For the next two decades, Purity Dairy was part of the fabric of daily life. Milkmen delivered fresh milk, cream, butter, eggs, and cheese directly to neighborhood doorsteps. Berg himself had grown up in the era when horses knew their routes so well they could make deliveries almost on their own. Home delivery wasn’t a luxury—it was simply how families got their milk.
As the dairy business modernized, consolidation followed. In 1955, Purity Dairy and Ohleen Dairy joined together under Dairy Distributors, Inc., and in 1956 Berg sold Purity Dairy to Twin City Milk Producers. He remained as manager until retiring in 1965, closing a nearly fifty-year career in the dairy business.
By the time the last independent-era dairy identity faded from Robbinsdale, the rhythm of milk bottles on porches was already slipping into memory—but not before leaving behind a local legacy of creameries, delivery routes, and neighborhood milkmen. It was an era when milk arrived on your doorstep in glass bottles, not by app notification, and the most reliable subscription service in town came with a clinking crate and a driver who probably knew your front porch at least as well as your dog did.
