An Orange County historian is behind a new milk bottle museum highlighting the county’s rich dairy farming history.

Alex Prizgintas, 23, has been collecting old milk bottles dating back to the 1870s for more than a decade. He has them on display at the Orange County Milk Bottle Museum at 8 Shuit Place in Central Valley.

The curator says he finds them at antique stores, flea markets and even bottle dumps to collect them and says they all have ties to Orange County.

“As of 2020, only 32 milk-producing farms in Orange County remain. These glass bottles are often the last aspects of a history that was so important to our county,” says Prizgintas.

Prizgintas says many factors have contributed to the decline of the local dairy farming industry, including the increasing development of farmland, lessened popularity of dairy products and the growth of “super farms.”

Prizgintas says there were 4,000 farms in Orange County during the late 1800s and that half were dairy farms.

“The true value of this collection for me is knowing I am actively preserving an important part of Orange County’s history and seeing the smiles of faces, new and old, that visit me at the museum," says Prizgintas

The Orange County Milk Bottle Museum opened in 2022. Visit here for more information.