I love sketching old abandoned historic buildings. And if they were featured in sci-fi horror cult film, even better.

The Diamond Springs Creamery was built in 1893 in Loleta, California. Which is about 20 miles south of Eureka. The location of the plant would make sense because it is in the middle of California Coastal cow country and on the route of the Northwestern Pacific mainline, bringing dairy to points south including San Francisco.

The dairy plant is very large, perhaps three blocks by six blocks. A good portion of the town must have worked at the plant making Loleta a real company town.

Now the brick building is falling apart with broken windows and covered in graffiti. It was in operation for over one hundred years, stopping production in 2007 and finally being abandoned in 2010. It is now surrounded by a fence with many “No Trespassing” signs on display. This must be to keep graffiti artists and film geeks at bay.

In 1982, Loleta filled in for the fictional town of Santa Mira and the creamery stood in for the Silver Shamrock Novelties factory in the film Halloween III: Season of the Witch.

While the film made a profit, it was the lowest grossing film in the Halloween franchise. It probably shouldn’t have been called Halloween III because it gave the false expectations that it was going to star a man in a doctored Captain Kirk mask with a large knife. This film does feature masks but not Michael Myers.