Spurlin Dairy (Carlsbad, New Mexico)

Spurlin Dairy was a dairy business in Carlsbad, New Mexico, run by Elmer Odell Spurlin and his wife Gladys Spurlin.^[1][2] Its glass milk bottles, printed in orange with the name "Spurlin Grade A Dairy", are sold today as collectibles. They come in a range of sizes, from a small creamer to half-gallon jugs.^[3][4][5]

Owners and history

Gladys Spurlin's obituary says she and her husband Elmer "ran Black River Village ranch, dairy, and farm, as well as Spurlin Dairy in Carlsbad, NM".^[1] According to the same obituary, the couple also operated Hobbs Ice in Hobbs, New Mexico, and the Tatum Variety Store in Tatum, New Mexico, and managed motels in Lubbock, Canyon and Amarillo, Texas. Gladys was born on July 21, 1914, and died on January 13, 2014; her interment was set for July 21, 2014, in Haskell, Texas.^[1] A Find a Grave memorial gives Elmer O. Spurlin's dates as June 6, 1909 – April 5, 1982, records his burial in Willow Cemetery at Haskell, and links him to his wife, "Gladys Miller Spurlin".^[6]

The obituary of their son Odell Spurlin (1936–2022) says he was born in Haskell, Texas, and that the family moved to Carlsbad, where his parents "owned and operated Black River Village just outside of Carlsbad". On that land they "ranched, had milk cows, as well as the Spurlin Dairy." The obituary adds that a military practice range was also on the property, and that Odell was badly burned as a boy when he struck an unexploded bomb he had found there.^[2] Odell graduated from Carlsbad High School in 1955,^[2] so the family was in Carlsbad by the early 1950s.

Black River Village had a history before the Spurlins. A postcard of "The Lodge, Black River Village, Carlsbad, New Mexico", postmarked June 18, 1936, carries a message from a traveler who stayed in a cabin near the lodge before visiting Carlsbad Caverns.^[7] The later Black River Center for Learning, a retreat and conference center on Black River Village Road, said on its website that before the 1950s the village included public buildings and a tourist resort on the main road to the caverns and El Paso. When a new highway was built farther west, the tourist trade declined.^[8] When the Spurlins acquired the property is not stated in any source found.

The dairy's founding and closing dates, its legal name and its plant address were not found in online sources and remain unverified. Chronicling America's digitized newspapers and the Eddy County pages of the NMGenWeb project turned up nothing on it, and back issues of the Carlsbad Current-Argus could not be searched for this entry.

Bottles and markings

Bottles from the dairy appear often in online sales. The descriptions below come from sellers.

• Quarts. An eBay listing (open in September 2026, priced at US $9.99) describes an 8⅝-inch quart with orange pyroglazed (painted) lettering. The front reads "Spurlin Grade A Dairy / Carlsbad, N. M. / Phone 1142J". The back carries the slogan "She's Wise She Buys With Her Eyes / Buy Your Milk In Glass, Too!" with a picture of a woman and a milk bottle.^[3] A quart in WorthPoint's archive of past sales has the same slogan but reads "PHONE 1523 W" on the front.^[9] WorthPoint also records a square quart with an orange painted label.^[10]
• Pints. WorthPoint records a 7-inch pint with the same front and back text and the number "Phone 1523W".^[11] It also records two square pints with pyroglazed labels, one described as "Dairy Glass Milk Square Pint Pyroglazed Carlsbad N.M Spurlin Dairy" and the other as a mint "SQ PYRO PT".^[12][13] An eBay seller was offering another orange-print pint in September 2026.^[14]
• Half pints and creamers. One seller described a tall, square half pint with orange pyroglaze and the "Phone 1523W" front, with the slogan and picture on the back. The seller dated it to the 1950s and said the lip takes a 56 mm cap.^[15] WorthPoint also records a 5½-inch half pint with the slogan, and a glass creamer 2⅛ inches tall.^[16][4]
• Half gallons. Sales records include a half-gallon Spurlin Dairy bottle, a half-gallon "Spurlin Grade A Dairy" jug with pictures, and a half-gallon clear glass "cottage cheese jug" with the same name.^[5][17][18]
• Crate. A galvanized-metal and wood crate with 12 slots, made by the Superior company of Saint Paul, Minnesota, was sold with the seller's statement that it "belonged to the SPURLIN DAIRY IN CARLSBAD NEW MEXICO".^[19]

Every description that names a color calls the printing orange. Two telephone numbers appear on otherwise similar bottles, 1142J and 1523W.^[3][9] This suggests at least two production runs, though no source dates either number. WorthPoint shows its sale prices only to paying members, so prices from its archive are not recorded here.

For context, milk-bottle references say dairy names were embossed from a slug plate on bottles made before the 1930s. From the 1930s dairies used pyroglaze, or Applied Color Label (ACL), printing, and the square, squat bottle became the popular shape in the 1940s.^[20] Every Spurlin bottle described in these sources is printed rather than embossed, and several are square, which fits the family's mid-century Carlsbad years. That dating is an inference from bottle style and one seller's estimate, not a documented fact. No embossed Spurlin Dairy bottles were found.

Other Spurlin dairymen

Not every Spurlin connected with dairying ran this business. James Edwards Spurlin (1924–2010) of Chickasha, Oklahoma, returned from Navy service in World War II to become a partner with his father on the family farm and dairy. According to his obituary in the Chickasha Express-Star, he was vice-president of the Oklahoma Dairy Committee and a director and president of the Grady County Dairy Association, and he and his wife were named Station WKY Farm Family of the Year in 1972. No Spurlin-branded bottles are known from that operation.^[21] Spurlin Farms, Inc., on Dairy Lane in Galax, Virginia, turns up in business-record searches, but those records link it to a family named Spurling, a different spelling.^[22]

See also Spurlin collectibles and memorabilia.