Tillamook Cheese Factory
Tillamook, Oregon
If there were a mecca for cheese, it might be the Tillamook Cheese Factory in Tillamook, Oregon, where pilgrimages are made for the free cheese samples, the ice cream and the squeaky cheese curds that are sold exclusively at the factory.
Groups can take self-guided tours through the Tillamook County Creamery Association’s original cheese factory, which produces 171,000 pounds of cheese every day using milk straight from the dairy farmers who own the co-op. The milk is turned into cheese within 24 hours of arriving at the factory, according to the company.
As groups wander through, they file into glass-walled viewing areas to watch the entire cheese-making process: the milk coming into the plant and being poured into large vats and the curding process, said Ashley Riggs, media coordinator for Tillamook. Interpretative panels along the way explain what’s happening on the factory floor below.
On the other side of the production facility is the packing plant. Cheese that has been aged anywhere from two months to three years is brought in from the on-site warehouse. Visitors can watch as 40-pound blocks of cheese are cut into grocery-store-sized chunks and packed for sale.
At the end of the tour, guests will find unlimited free samples of Tillamook cheese, “although you can really only eat so much,” Riggs said.
