In 1871 the Brigham City Mercantile and Manufacturing Association built a dairy in Cottonwood Hollow near this location. The large two and a half story structure, built from locally quarried stone, served as the Dairy Department of the religious cooperative established by Mormon Apostle Lorenzo Snow. Christian and Elizabeth Hansen, immigrants from Denmark in 1854, operated the dairy, and Elizabeth, widely acknowledged as an expert cheese maker, was responsible for all of its products. Members of the cooperative loaned cows to the dairy in early spring, and each fall the cows were returned along with a share of the cheese and butter produced from their milk. At peak production, nearly 600 cows were milked by hand twice daily by thirty milkmaids, and 50,000 pounds of cheese were produced each year. The butter and cheese were of very high quality, and Elizabeth's cheeses won two gold medals at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. A devastating fire at the cooperative's woolen factory in 1879, followed by an onerous federal tax assessment that same year, sent the cooperative into receivership. Christian and Elizabeth Hansen then purchased the dairy and operated it successfully until 1893. Their son Willard Snow Hansen continued the dairy for a time before turning to sheep ranching, while their other son, Lorenzo Hansen, founded the Cache Valley Condensed Milk Company, which for decades produced evaporated milk, cream cheese, and butter at six creameries in Utah and Idaho.