Bulldozers are busy again in California's Chino Valley.
It's the resumption of the sad but inevitable end to what for decades was the center of the dairy world. The remnants of what used to be a sea of dairies is once more disappearing to make way for a sea of houses.
Locals say the process restarted in late 2012, a by-product of the continued gradual recovery of the national economy. Renewed consumer confidence means renewed housing demand, and that makes the holdout dairies prime targets.
The current pace of demolition is slow - nowhere near the frantic level during 2001 to 2006 - but with so few dairies remaining, each new knockdown seems more noticeable. And when three dairies on the same side of a street are razed at once (one is seen above), the sight is eerie.
Only a small part of what the valley once was still remains.
Milk Producers Council General Manager Rob Vandenheuvel estimates that the total number of dairies left in the Chino-Corona-Ontario-Mira Loma area is just 75. Figures from the California Department of Food and Agriculture suggest the total number of cows is approximately 80,000.
That pales to the numbers seen in its heyday - 330 dairies in 1984 and approximately 300,000 cows in 1991.
