Did you know that Tillamook has been making ice cream since the 1940s? In 1947 Tillamook made Tillamook Maid and frosty 4 ice cream for the local community. By the 1950s the demand for the delicious frozen treat grew and Tillamook began shipping to two other local counties, Lincoln and Clatsop. In the late 1970s 3-gallon containers as well as half gallons of Tillamook ice cream began shipping throughout Oregon so that people outside of our small coastal counties could enjoy a scoop!

Our best kept secret from the 1940s is now enjoyed by people in the Northwest, California, Utah, Colorado, and even parts of Arizona. To taste all 28 of our ice cream flavors come visit us at The Cheese Factory!

By Kathy

A view of Cheddar Gorge. Photo: half a world away/Flickr

The folks at Tillamook know a lot about cheddar. Our cheddar is naturally aged and made with the highest quality milk… but we realized that we knew little to nothing about the original big cheese: Cheddar, England. Here are just a couple things we learned about the home to this tasty cheese.

- Cheddar is home to Cheddar Gorge, the largest gorge in the UK. Actually, Cheddar cheese got its name from this gorge, which was used to store and age the cheese as early as 1170. That’s way older than our 100 year old recipe!
- The Cheddar Gorge was also home to Britain’s oldest complete skeleton (aptly named Cheddar Man), estimated to be 9,000 years old.
- Along with its namesake cheese, Cheddar is also known for its strawberry production (do strawberries and cheddar taste good together? Try an Ice Cream Grilled Cheese PB&J!).
- These days, there is only one producer of cheddar in Cheddar.

Now that you know a little bit about Cheddar, test yourself to see how well you Know Your Cheese!

By Katie

Tillie squeaky toy in a Christmas display in 1958.

You may know Loafy, but do you know about Tillie?

Sweet-faced Tillie of Tillamook was a little brown Jersey cow used in a variety of advertisements and store displays to promote our dairy products in the 1950s and 1960s. We don’t exactly when she first entered the spotlight, but the earliest print advertisement in our archives portraying Tillie is May 1, 1955, in the Sacramento Bee. Tillie wasn’t widely used, but she was popular enough to be transformed into a squeaky toy that was available in 1958 until the early 1960s. The squeaky Tillie of Tillamook was a beloved toy of many children. Tillie eventually dropped out of the spotlight for a period of time. She reappeared around 2000 when she began making personal appearances at events. Tillie has undergone a few cosmetic enhancements as she’s aged. She’s now a Holstein, but Tillie is still a beloved mascot of Tillamook.

By Loafy

We know you’re familiar with Loafy and that cheery orange medium cheddar cheese packaging, but Loafy wasn’t always so dressed up. Tillamook Cheese loafs have come a long way from their paraffin dip shells and wooden crates to the airtight “shrink bags” they come in now. Here’s a look at our Tillamook packaging roots from the archives…

Here is a 2# baby loaf and other cheese sizes from our early days ready to ship in a wooden crate.

Check out these fancy boxes! There were a variety of cartons the paraffin dipped Baby Loaf was sold in.

In 1966, Baby Loaf gets its first Morning Star Ship seal.

In the mid 1980’s the shrink bag replaced the paraffin wax dip on the Baby Loaf and other products.

Here’s Baby Loaf with other 1 lb packages in the 1990’s.

In 2003 all types of Tillamook Cheese packaging got a new look reminiscent of the old style “Tillamook on the rind.”

Happy 100th Anniversary! Tillamook Cheese turned 100 in 2009 with some celebratory packaging.

In 2010 Baby Loaf began wearing its “Word’s Best Medium Cheddar” title proudly.

Now who knows what’s next for our tasty Baby Loaf!

By Scott

Once cheesemaking was introduced to Tillamook County, the floodgates opened and little creameries were quickly constructed all around the county. This primarily was because the roads weren’t all that good and it took a long time to transport milk from one side of the county to the other by way of horse and wagon. It was easier for a farmer to take his few cans of milk to a local creamery.

One such creamery was the Tillamook Creamery. It was located about a mile south of town, which today is 12^th and Main in the city of Tillamook. In 1903, the president of the Tillamook Creamery had the idea of hire a young lawyer as a bookkeeper and salesman. That was a brilliant decision, because the young lawyer was none other than Carl Haberlach, the man who suggested organizing the local creameries into a cooperative.

In this photo, taken around 1900, the man with the hat holding a plug of cheese (front, right) was a young Fred Christiansen. Fred learned to make cheese from Peter McIntosh, and after a time as cheesemaker, went on to very long and successful career as cheese inspector. (I’ll tell you his tale later.)

The Tillamook Creamery wasn’t the first creamery in the county but it was one of the larger ones. In 1949, its board of directors agreed to merge their cheesemaking operations with three other local creameries, plus the Tillamook County Creamery Association, and build a new, centrally-located plant in Tillamook.

By Chandra

The tasty deliciousness of Tillamook Cheese can be attributed to the talents of the many cheesemakers throughout the 102 years of TCCA. But there is one man in particular who got us started on the right path. That would be Peter McIntosh.

Peter was born in Ontario where he learned the trade of cheesemaker. He was interested in the cheesemaking process since he was a boy. He said he “just grew into the knowledge of the cheddar process of making cheese.”

Peter McIntosh, circa 1890

But how did he get from there to here? In a 1933 interview, Peter said “These Tillamook folks (that would be T.S. Townsend and Harry Ogden) wanted me to come over and get them stated right in the cheese end of their enterprise, so…I went over.” And aren’t we happy he did so?

While many people were making cheese on their homesteads with their extra milk, and a few were trying to figure out how to make cheese (We appreciate their efforts, too.), Peter was the first who was a trained cheesemaker. By 1902 he had acquired seven creameries across the county and was making over 1 million pounds of cheese a year. His influence on the cheese industry not only in Tillamook but the whole Pacific Northwest earned him the nickname of Cheese King of the Coast.

By Chandra

Only with Tillamook would I make my scalloped dishes! You don’t want to run the risk of “rubber-band effect” by using a substitute.

I really enjoy reading the copy of the old Tillamook ads. The creativity that went into the drawings and the copy just make me smile. In this particular ad, dating from the late 1930s to the early 1904s, we assure you that your scalloped potatoes will be at their best when made with Tillamook Cheese. We always made the most of every opportunity to share with the housewife (our primary demographic at the time) of how perfectly tasty Tillamook cheese is in their every-day recipes, a covered dish for their bridge club or something special for a dinner party.

The included Potato Puff recipe looks tasty, too, but only if it’s made with Tillamook Cheese! I don’t want to take any chances with the texture becoming like a rubber band!

By Loafy

At the time of its construction, the 1949 Tillamook cheesemaking plant was considered state of the art. During the dedication ceremony, a few individuals took some time out to reminisce about how cheese used to be made. Standing left to right is Harold Sutton, the new plant’s head cheesemaker; Frank Owens, TCCA’s vice president; George Lawson, TCCA’s secretary-manager; and Merle Jensen, the plant’s superintendent. The four men are comparing an old cheese kettle with the modern cheese vats behind them in the cheesemaking room. Well, they were modern for 1949 at least, but they don’t quite compare to the cheese vats you can see today in our cheesemaking room. The cheese vats today can hold about four times more milk.

By Chandra

Tillamook has a long history of cheesemakers. Each of them played a role in helping to establish Tillamook County as cheddar country, even if not all of the earliest attempts were successful or the cheesemakers were particularly good. We’ll give those folks an “A” for effort. It didn’t take long, though, before we were on the right track and making some tasty cheddar cheese.

The handsome bunch in this photo was all Tillamook cheesemakers. It is dated 1948 and they were photographed while attending a cheesemakers banquet. They probably needed a break, considering all the hard work they put into making Tillamook Cheese! In 1948, the Tillamook County Creamery Association was still a cooperative of creameries, and each creamery had its own staff of talented cheesemakers making award-winning cheddars. In fact, a 1949 article stated that with 15 creameries and 24 licensed cheesemakers, Tillamook County had about half of all of the cheesemakers in the state of Oregon.

We continued to have little creameries operating around the county, each with their own cheesemaker, all the way up until 1968. That’s when the few remaining creameries consolidated their milk supply into the centrally-located plant and there was a single cheesemaker overseeing the entire cheesemaking operation.

By Chandra

Talk about some horse-power! This photo is from 1907, when farm equipment was pulled with four legs as opposed to rolling on four wheels. Frank Streuby, the farmer in this photo, took a break from the time-consuming and labor-intensive job of guiding a horse and ox-drawn mower through a field. His children, Frank Jr. and Henrietta, stand in front of him.

By Chandra