The Hopkins County Dairy Festival returns after a three-year hiatus, and citizens could not be more excited to participate in one of our signature historical celebrations. 

The aim of the dairy festival is to “honor, promote and educate about Hopkins dairy farmers and the dairy industry,” according to their mission statement, and since 1959 when the festival was founded, they have been doing just that. 

A slate of fun activities including the junior dairy show, milking contest, hot air balloon jamboree and pageant have become staples over the last 63 years. 

Hopkins County holsteins ready for milking/ Taylor Nye

Hopkins’ role as one of the largest dairying counties in Texas began all the way back in the pioneer days. Early white settlers to the area “came to this land of opportunity with a family milk cow fastened to the back of the wagon to provide the family with milk, butter and cheese,” the dairy festival committee noted.  

Although Hopkins’ first settlers roughed it in many ways, “we can only imagine the hardships that fresh churned butter, milk in the cistern and hand cranked ice cream assuaged as the settlers looked forward to a better life,” the committee said.   

Dairy farming has been an established industry in the county since at least 1900, according to the Texas State Historical Society. 

Hopkins County’s dairy enthusiasm grew during the 1930s as the Carnation Milk Company established itself in Sulphur Springs in 1937. The facility specialized in the production of canned milk, so Hopkins County became a hub of fresh dairy products and inextricably tied the economy to commercial milk and dairy production. 

Onetime Texas attorney general and native son Grover Sellers helped spearhead efforts for Hopkins’ farmers to own their own herds, and by 1949, some 200 class-A dairies had been established in the county, according to the Texas Agricultural Extension Service, and figures by them in 1950 reflected that on a cow-per-acre basis, Hopkins was leading the state in milk production by county. 

In 1959, an excited county held the first ever Dairy Festival. The first festival featured familiar events, and some no longer included today such as a milk drinking contest and a spring flower show, according to old editions of the Hopkins County Echo. The festival’s first pageant queen was Sunell “Sunny” Comfort (nee Rogers). In fact, all of the past queens save two are still alive and an integral part of Hopkins County. Every year the pageant invites previous contestants from ten, 25 and 50 years prior to ride on floats and participate in the decades of tradition they helped to uphold. 

During the 1980s, a series of agricultural reforms in Holland led to immigration of many of Holland’s  dairy farmers to Hopkins County. Aided by the knowledge of Dutch immigrants, Hopkins County transitioned from state leader to juggernaut in the dairying field. By 1990, according to the extension service statistics, Hopkins Count boasted almost 500 dairies producing nearly 17 percent of the state total.

At the turn of the millennium, however, the world economy privileged factory farms and many small-scale Hopkins county producers could not keep up. Although Hopkins County mourns the loss of their status as Texas’ number one dairying county, according to AgriLife there are still 45 dairy producers (permitted dairies) and to 150 smaller dairy producers who continue to honor our dairying history. 

The dairies Hopkins still has today are top-of-the-line. “Farmers nurtured and established an industry that today boasts of the most modern in technology; computerized identification, modern milking and cooling systems, speedy transportation of milk for processing and some of the most scientific adaptation of breeding, feeding and recycling known to mankind,” the committee noted.  

Hopkins county milking in 2020/ Taylor Nye

“Every April through June we work like engines to put on the Dairy Festival, because we take a lot of pride in our history,” said committee member and pageant co-chair Cindy Lancaster.

Gallery images by Mandy Fiock. Historical images from Hopkins County Echo

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