Iconic San Diego photographer Herbert Fitch took this photo of cows lounging at what was then known as Long Beach, in 1906.  The cows belonged to nearby Holliday Dairy, which  remained in operation until World War I when the land was plowed and planted with lima beans to produce gunpowder for the war effort.

Mission Valley

When I was a kid, in the 1950s, my father would take my sister and I to Holiday Farms, which offered all the buttermilk you could drink for 15¢.  My sister Vicki wasn't a buttermilk fan, but we enjoyed feeding the ducks that swam in the nearby pond.  The farm, or at least the store, was located about where Benihana is today in Mission Valley.  You can see it "east of the Cabrillo Freeway" on the right side of the photo above.  The photo, by the way, looks east across what is now the I-8 and Highway 163 interchange. 

One day my father came home with two ducks, which Vicki and I promptly named Donald and Daisy.  They produced eggs like crazy, and poop as well, but they sure kept the snails out of the garden.  My father's plan to produce ducklings -- if that was even his plan -- came to a halt when we learned we, in fact, owned TWO Daisies.  That explained all of the eggs.  Anyway, not long after, under the cover of a darkening sky, we bundled up the ducks and took them to their new home -- Holiday Farms.  Or, as I now realize, HOLLIDAY Farm.

 

Notice the "location" changes in ads (counter-clock wise) from 1952, 1958, and 1960

This color aerial from 1967 looks west from the end of Madison Avenue in University Heights.  Holliday Farm is tucked away at the left of center.  I think I can see milk trucks in the parking lot.  Another site has this listed as Challenge Dairies, an assertion I was unable to confirm or deny.