The Lake to Lake Dairy Cooperative, a non-profit cooperative now encompassing eight northeastern Wisconsin counties (Door, Kewaunee, Manitowoc, Sheboygan, Fond du Lac, Calumet, Winnebago, and Brown) was founded in 1946. Several dairy farmers saw the need for a cooperative; dairy prices in their area were depressed despite the fact that it had one of the densest dairy cow populations in the state. Henry Binversie and Melvin Lutzke recruited farmers and, with the help of Manitowoc County Agent Truman Torgerson, had over eighty people pledged to form a cooperative by the end of 1945.
Organizational meetings were held, and the area was divided into seven districts with one member of the Board of Directors elected from each district. On July 17, 1946, the first Board of Directors' meeting of the Lake to Lake Dairy Cooperative convened. Its stated purpose was to “be as principal or agent to buy, sell, process, manufacture, handle, transport, store, and market milk and cream and products into which milk and cream enter, and dairy equipment and supplies and to do things necessary or incidental to any of these purposes.”
By the time Lake to Lake Dairy Cooperative began operations in Valders, Wisconsin, on October 23, 1946, over 1200 farmers in five counties (Brown, Calumet, Door, Kewaunee, and Manitowoc) had become members. Construction began immediately on a new cheese processing plant in Kiel, Wisconsin, which was completed in 1949. In this same year, the Cooperative also purchased a milk processing plant in Denmark, Wisconsin, and in the following year (1950) opened a new receiving plant in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. Lake to Lake Dairy Cooperative continued to expand into new marketing areas and the manufacture of additional dairy products such as butter, bottled milk, and ice cream through mergers with or purchases of other cooperatives and dairies, including Modern Dairy of Sheboygan (1956), the Sheboygan Falls Dairy (1959), the Northeastern Dairy Cooperative of Green Bay (1961), Winnebago Farms of Fond du Lac (1961), Sunlite Dairy of Oshkosh (1962), Delwiche Farms of Green Bay (1965), Sorge Ice Cream and Dairy Company of Manitowoc (1965), and other smaller dairies and cooperatives. The Lake to Lake Dairy Cooperative continues to grow. Under the leadership of General Manage Truman Torgerson, the Cooperative has risen from a membership of 1200 members and sales of 450,000 dollars in 1947 to a membership well over 2000 and sales over 66 million dollars in 1975.
