Tillamook Creamery (November 2, 2025)

Don't we all love Tillamook cheese and ice cream? We visited the source in Tillamook, Oregon, a beautiful 90-minute drive to the coast from Portland. We traveled through a forest of trees covered in yellow, orange, and red leaves.
 

VW microbuses were painted cheddar cheese orange for Tillamook's national promotional tour in 2010. We enjoyed cheese and ice-cream samples on our tour of the factory.

When the factory opened in 1949, cheesemakers made cheese the old-fashioned way, in open vats. The process is called "hand-cheddaring." Today, the cheesemakers use the state-of-the-art Cheddarmaster machine to separate curds from whey, and automate the cheddaring process.

I remember hearings ads as a kid bragging that certain brands of bread were "untouched by human hands," like automation is better than bread made by bakers. Robots turn 40-pound blocks of cheese into 20 2-pound blocks. The "40-pound blocks" actually weigh 41-42 pounds, so workers take a little off the top to make shredded cheese. Cheese, whether touched or untouched by human hands, is so yummy!

Starting in 1958, sweet-faced Tilly of Tillamook, a little brown Jersey cow, promoted Tillamook cheese for more than 50 years. She was a beloved rubber squeak toy for many cheese and ice-cream lovers.

Taking nachos to another level!