Then & Now: Bowman Dairy Company – Mokena

The Bowman Dairy Company began in downstate Illinois in the 1870s, when Johnston R. Bowman traveled to St. Louis from the family farm to arrange a market for the milk produced by farms in his area.

Bowman soon started the J.R. Bowman Milk Company and began to transport the milk by horse and wagon from his family farm in Sandoval, Illinois. By the 1880s, the family-run business prospered.

In 1885, J.R. Bowman entered the Chicago dairy market by purchasing the milk business of M. A. Devine. Six years later he sold his St. Louis operation and moved to Chicago where he formed the Bowman Dairy Company.

Over the years the Bowman Company expanded its markets outside of Chicago and built large bottling plants on the South Side of Chicago. One such plant was built on Wolf Road in 1907, next to the Rock Island tracks in Mokena.

The Bowman Company, once an employer of more than 3,000 Chicago employees and a leading supplier of dairy products in the Chicago area, also was one of Mokena’s more flourishing enterprises.

The company also owned several subsidiaries, other dairy companies, powered milk and powdered egg companies in other cities, primarily in the Midwest.

During the 1940s, the company began concentrating on marketing powdered milk products to commercial bakeries and the U.S. Armed Forces. At one time, Bowman Dairy Company was the largest home-deliverer of milk in the world.

The Bowman Company continued to flourish as a large business until 1966, when losses in the home delivery sector of the business forced the company out of the dairy business completely. The business eventually purchased by local rival, the Dean Foods Company.

The processing plant on Wolf Road existed for a number of years and was eventually converted into a brewery and wallpaper mill.

In February 2004, the old factory building was razed, clearing the way for a retail and residential center.