"Kansas City is a world leader in the use of underground space for human occupancy," he said. The Rieger family went into banking and the West Bottoms distillery was paved over. DUFFIN: It was 1976. Yes, the Government Really Does Stash Billions of Pounds of Cheese in Missouri Caves The USDA has kept cheese and other dairy products in cold-storage caves for decades. YOU CAN, Argentina's El Impenetrable Opens Up New Options For Its People, How Laos Got Its First Buffalo Dairy Farm, How the Capones Strong-Armed Their Way Into the Dairy Business, The French Art of Cheese-Label Collecting, The Last Cheesemakers of the Eastern Himalayas, Show & Tell: Inside a House of Hot Sauce With Vic Clinco, The Secret to China's Bounciest Meatballs. It's only about a 3-inch-in-diameter hole. One of Kansas City's best-loved parks is home to a secret cave No one knows why the cave in Roanoke Park was walled offor why, after decades, it opened last month. A set of caves along Interstate 435 offered a convenient cold-storage option. And so they try to hire more cheese graders. A NASA employee needing an area to test sensitive navigational instruments was among the first official cave occupants. As the room and pillar mining method is used to extract limestone throughout the Midwest, many companies are looking at ways to utilize the hundreds of millions of square feet created in this manner for everything from mushroom farming to crude oil stockpiling. According to USDA statistics, the average American eats 34.1 pounds of cheese every year and is projected to eat 36.5 pounds by 2024. I'm Karen Duffin. Born from tragedy, the remote national park is bringing tourism and other changes. A native Midwesterner with a love for family, friends, and learning new things. Through our sister company, Cold Zone, we are able to store refrigerated food, such as cheese for our tenants. Decades of propping up the dairy industryby buying up surplus. While the government-owned cheese hoards of the 1970s and 80s are largely a thing of the past, the U.S. has still never really figured out what to do with its excess dairy. (SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MARTHA & SNOOP'S POTLUCK DINNER PARTY"). YOU CAN SIGN UP HERE. Youve heard about the subterranean chamber beneath the land near Worlds of Fun, right? This one-of-a-kind display showcases a wide variety of hair art, historic hair pieces, and more. He is now a dairy economist at Cornell University. This will be about 3/4 to a cup of water. MALONE: Dan says that the cheese took up about half an acre of space. MALONE: Until there was no more room for you to be in this room? Well, its called SubTropolis, is owned by Hunt Midwest yes, the same Hunt family that owns the Kansas City Chiefs and is wide enough to hold 42 Arrowhead Stadiums. Theres even a train track winding through the colossal complex, and many, many exit signs. MALONE: For a lot of people who grew up in the 1970s and '80s, you cannot overstate how influential government cheese became. HOME; INTERIORS; EXTERIORS; OFFICE & PORTRAITS; PUBLICITY/EVENTS; CONSTRUCTION; INFO MALONE: Even if that bite just looks like some delicious cheese? It was created by digging into the Bethany Falls limestone mine and is, in places, 160 feet beneath the surface. Though its more a part of Midtown than Downtown, the space once known as Deans Downtown Underground is definitely down there. NOVAKOVIC: So it's fundamental economics. Specifically, the federal government had 560 million pounds of cheese, most of it stored in vast subterranean storage facilities. In 1949, the Agricultural Act allowed a government agency to buy up dairy products to stabilize prices. MALONE: You were hired as someone to show up with a metal ASCHEBROCK: Where you do quality checks on it. The program is meant to "purchase Mozzarella, Process and Natural American Cheddar Cheese for the National School Lunch Program and other Federal food nutrition assistance programs." He says the government was buying powdered milk, butter and cheddar cheese - only grade-A cheddar, though. This is Dan Callahan. Try the frozen treat that inspired Arrested Development's famous banana stand. NOVAKOVIC: The federal government wouldn't have the foggiest idea what to do with tanker loads of milk. JAY-Z: (Rapping) After that government cheese, we eatin' steak. A grader, where you do quality checks on it. So the government gave a bunch to schools, then to the Army. A cave (also known as a cavern) is a common terrain feature that generates in the Overworld and the Nether. MALONE: There will be a cave in Kansas City, a van down by the river and a touching exchange between Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg. 2023 Atlas Obscura. How would you like to work underground? All rights reserved. The Washington Post reported that the interest and storage costs for all that dairy was costing around $1 million a day. MALONE: The government cheese caves started to empty out. In the 1940s, there was a real concern that we were going to have a hard time keeping up with providing the necessities of life, Novakovi says. And it's the most government packaging you will ever see - just, like, brown cardboard, some black USDA stamps on it. He's been working here since the 1970s, since the cheese debacle. DUFFIN: It is a case study in what happens when price controls run full speed into the realities of the market. What would the government do if you drove this into downtown Washington and said, here you go? DUFFIN: Bob's job was to make sure that all of the cheese met USDA grade A cheddar standards - the right moisture level, the proper shade of yellowish-orange, the correct flavor profile. MALONE: Andy is still in the dairy world. No, it doesnt have to do with the disastrous flooding experienced there in 1903 and 1951. MALONE: Bob Aschebrock spent 30 years as a USDA cheese inspector. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: A state official estimated 300,000 people will get a taste of today's cheese. Lever 2, more demand - you could try to convince the public that they want to drink more milk. Here's a few you should know, A guide to discovering Kansas City's public art installations. On the north edge of the complex Hunt developed the Worlds of Fun and Oceans of Fun amusement park complex. warehouses in Germany, Belgium, and France. ASCHEBROCK: Will eat any cheese. ASCHEBROCK: There is a bung - what they call a bunghole up on the top. MALONE: Yeah. SubTropolis is a 55,000,000-square-foot (5,100,000m2), 1,100-acre (4.5km2) artificial cave in the bluffs above the Missouri River in Kansas City, Missouri, United States, that is claimed to be the world's largest underground storage facility. One of the Heim brothers helped build a theme park there called Electric Park, which in turn gave inspiration to J. Rieger & Co.s outdoor area of the same name. To see the best of them, embark on this road trip to Missouris best abandoned places. This little-known cave area in Kansas is the perfect opportunity to explore something that many Kansans might not have heard of before. CHRIS FARLEY: (As Matt Foley) I'm here to tell you that you're going to end up eating a steady diet of government cheese and living in a van down by the river. It's got its flaws. Emily Standlee is a freelance writer at KCUR and a national award-winning essayist. Kansas City, MO 64112. The massive. The Campground recently unearthed pieces of the distillerys tile floor as they were renovating their own bar. In response to this dairy shortage and 30% inflation . The easier solution - maybe - the government could just start buying a ton of milk themselves. So the thing that the government was concerned about is what's called commercial displacement. NOVAKOVIC: So you can imagine, you know, you don't just kind of roll down one of these barrels down Seventh Avenue in New York City and say, anybody want some cheese? (Dean Russell/Here & Now) This article is more than 4 years old. The bar stools are original and survived some of the flooding. So how in the world did the U.S. end up with a mountain of slowly molding cheese? I mean, it was really, really good product. The year was 1981, and President Ronald Reagan had a cheese problem. These limestone caverns arent the only channels running under the city. However, when Prohibition was enacted in 1919 via the 18th Amendment, the alcohol purveyor shut its doors. The idea of "government cheese" is an enduring blip in the American psyche. The 55,000 sq ft underground storage facility is the world's largest underground business complex. Love Missouri? ASCHEBROCK: Well, I think cheese eating is better than dating sometimes. U.S. skyrocketed from 5.5 percent up to 14 percent, Im giving dairy farmers an equal break., boost cheese sales by more than 30 million pounds, 43 million gallons of milk down the drain, $20 million worth of cheese to cut the glut, 1.4 billion pounds of cheese in cold storage, currently has 7 million pounds of raw product, Sign up for our email, delivered twice a week. It is an enormous artificial cave situated above the Missouri River. MALONE: The government is creating a price floor. They are open spaces of various sizes and shapes that often intersect with each another or with different generated structures, creating vast cave systems. The surplus dairy products now in storage have a market value of $3 billion. Last year, the U.S. produced nearly 12 billion pounds of cheese -- an all-time high, according to the USDA. While many of the caves feature paved roads and utilities, other areas consist of dirt floors and uncontrolled entrances. It is estimated that Kansas has more than 700 and caves, and almost 350 are in the Red Hills. And then on the other side, the government tried to replace some of their artificial demand for milk with new real demand for milk. What are the most unusual places in Missouri? SNOOP DOGG: (Rapping) And we ghetto like a [expletive] hot buttered toast in the mornin' with some government cheese. (SOUNDBITE OF FREDERIC AUGER'S "SUNBURN"). Andy Novakovic spent his summers as a kid working on his grandparents' dairy farm in Wisconsin. Government buys more cheese. Cheese Caves Myth: Debunked. Government cheese arrived at our home in enormous uncut yellow blocks wrapped in white nondescript cardboard. Starting in 1995, a government nonprofit has promoted a pro-dairy policy - in direct opposition to the Department of Agriculture and government nutritionists. Strong Distilling, the only known legal distillery operating in a cave, and catch a "Cave Concert" while you're there. Anyway, the government had its plan in place. ASCHEBROCK: It was 10 times better than - I hate - you know, Velveeta is OK. Posted on June 16, 2022 by June 16, 2022 by It is more than a food that. "If they haven't been used, no one knows what state of deterioration they are in," Hasan said. NOVAKOVIC: As you can imagine, the cheese company that's in the business of selling cheese is going to say - hey, what's the deal here? Its first FRC opened in 1997 beneath Lee's Summit, and another opened in 2003 under Lenexa. Kenny Malone is a correspondent for NPR's Planet Moneypodcast. The reason why the dairy industry gets such preferential treatment is its status as this uncontested food in the diet, Wiley says. Expand All. Cheese-makers buy more milk. DUFFIN: And when news gets out that the government is filling a cave with cheese, the press goes nuts because this is exactly what people think of when they think of a government program gone awry. There's something instinctive in us that makes us want to leave a mark on the world. SNOOP DOGG: Martha's never had a bite of government cheese in her life. All our area around here - everybody had cheese. NOVAKOVIC: It's really hard to balance what you want to do socially or politically with what you can get away with economically. Looking for more unusual places in Missouri? During the 1980s, the U.S. government managed to offload its cheese stash. We can't find a market for it. Anyway, whats weird is that Peters talks about working beneath Park University in a limestone cave. MALONE: Even if that bite just looks like some delicious cheese. It dates back to a time when farmers were having a tough time in the 1920s and 30s and a growing feeling that the government should help., In the early 1900s, the growing availability of refrigerated transport allowed dairy farmers to sell their product on an unprecedented scale. DUFFIN: More graders grading more cheese that the government then buys. Beneath the bar, theres a hollow place in the wall that looks to have been covered up. Youll want to check out this cool hiking trail that has another cave youre welcome to explore. MALONE: The Trump administration announced that in order to help farmers being hurt by Trump's tariffs, the government may be making some food purchases again. China props up pork prices by buying surplus for its frozen pork reserve. DUFFIN: But maybe government cheese's most surreal moment came on a television show where Martha Stewart cooks stuff with Snoop Dog. Caves are usually found underground. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: The great cheese giveaway began today in California. DUFFIN: It's one thing for politicians to say, we want the price of milk to go up. MALONE: This is a cave full of cheese in Kansas City. Using Kansas City's underground caves to age cheese could be boon to region's cheese makers It still didn't seem right but I went ahead and drove into the cave. Cave Tours Missouri, long known as the "Cave State," has almost 6,400 caves, and Missouri State Parks showcases four of the best for public tours. Weve written about the 8th Street Tunnel before, and who can blame us? The guaranteed milk price, which had been going up automatically every six months, was eventually frozen. At Kanopolis park, near the lake of the same name, there's a short trail from a parking area that leads you through the brush into a clearing. Have you fallen in love with amateur spelunking? But the government then actually has to figure out a way to step into this market and make it happen. Start with this beginner's guide to the neighborhood, Kansas City's new airport terminal carries on the legacy of a 10-year-old who fought for inclusivity, Local public health officials fear a Kansas bill would undercut work to contain diseases, A federal lawsuit against Missouri's 'dysfunctional' SNAP call center has gotten bigger. Many tenants at . We also suggest picking up a digital hygrometer to measure cheese humidity, whether you're simply storing cheese in your Grotto or having fun with home cheesemaking. DUFFIN: But cheese just doesn't travel well. You can do something to make demand greater, or you can do something to make supply less. There's also a trail leading to the top of the area above the caves if you want to keep going! does st martin parish have school tomorrow. Very, very expensive cheese. Hogwarts, who? OnlyInYourState may earn compensation through affiliate links in this article. Either one should get you a higher price. And the resulting demand just pushes the price of milk up. Theres evidence the second story was a ballroom, complete with a stage, dumbwaiter and box office window. The Heim family owned property all over Kansas City at the turn of the century, including breweries called Rochester and Imperial, as well as the one in East Bottoms. These are the 13 weirdest places you can possibly go in Missouri. The Dairy Farmers of America, which has been using the facility, known as the Springfield Underground, for more than 30 years, currently has 7 million pounds of raw product.Some of this is normal inventory storage or cheese being aged. Add 16 oz of macaroni, or shells to the pressure cooker and enough water to cover the noodles completely. If you havent spent a day wandering the streets of Weston, Missouri, youre missing out.