People

American Jersey Ranch

In the mid-twentieth century, the Ranch continued dairy operations, selling milk to the American Dairy Company (now owned by Borden) as well as to other local creameries. The Ranch usually ran between 200 and 250 dairy cows. An on-site manager directed the activities of a dozen workers and an on-site cook prepared three square meals a day for all of them.

From the 1920s through the 1960s, Maria Pereira and her daughter, Mary Pereira Machado, worked as cooks at the Ranch. Maria Pereira immigrated from Portugal in the 1920s. After her husband lost his own dairy in the Depression, the family—including five children—moved to the American Dairy Ranch. As the cook for the ranch, Maria earned not only room and board, but also gasoline (the Ranch had its own pump) and a daily wage. The cook’s family was basically self-sufficient, with a large garden, pigs and chickens, as well as beef from the dairy’s “retired” cows. The family lived on the property in an 1870s farmhouse on the east side of the Guadalupe River. Maria’s daughter, Mary Machado, moved away upon marrying, but returned to the Ranch in the 1960s to support her family as the cook.

Through the post-war years, the American Jersey Ranch continued dairy operations amidst a sea of change. The agricultural industries of the Santa Clara Valley were slowly but surely replaced by new high technology industries, housing for high tech workers, and the infrastructure to support both. Portions of the Bettencourt land were given up for construction of the Almaden Expressway in the 1950s.

In the 1970s, control of the ranch passed to Anthony Bettencourt’s son, Robert J. Bettencourt, who had formal education in dairying and animal husbandry. The dairy produced 3,200 gallons of milk daily from Holstein cows. Within a few years, however, the dairy was no longer profitable; rising property taxes made the land more costly than its products could ever off-set.

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