We are starting our new year off with an exciting in-person on-location event: A tour of the Seven Acre Dairy in Paoli. This was the old cheese factory/creamery many of you remember growing up. The folks leading its renovation have done a lot of work to research and display its history – including talking with local farmers like Phil and Laura Roethlisberger. They even have a history wall with events and stories from the building’s past! See below for details, including a request to RSVP to me if you would like to come.
Thank you for your interest in local history.
Jesse Charles
Verona Area Historical Society, President
Sunday, January 22, 2023 @ 1:00 PM: FIELD TRIP! Tour of the Seven Acre Dairy Company, housed in the old Paoli Cheese Factory/Creamery, 6858 Paoli Rd.
Join us for a talk and tour at the newly-renovated Seven Acre Dairy Company in Paoli. Our host is Nic Mink, who along with his wife Danika Laine, is leading a renovation of the old dairy/creamery/cheese factory that ran on the banks of the Sugar River from 1888 to 1980. Many Verona farmers, including several of our historical society families, sent their milk to this plant for generations.
Nic and Danika have listed the building on the National Register of Historic Places and are launching the building’s new life as a restaurant, café, meeting space, hotel and perhaps most appropriately, a micro-dairy plant. We are grateful they have provided the Verona area with another example of how local historic preservation and modern development can complement each other.
Our tour will start in the facility’s newly-opened conference room, as Nic will describe how this project unfolded. We will then take an indoor walk of the building and learn how its former iterations evolved over time. As a side note, this meeting also counts as our historical society’s 2023 “annual meeting” (required for all nonprofits) and a very quick officer vote will precede the meeting at 1:00 PM.
Please note there are elevation changes during the tour and an elevator is available. The tour is open to the public.