Historic Hood River
Cheese Wars!
1-14-2026
Notes
This post is an entree into an obscure part of Oregon history: the Cheese Wars!
In the 1910s Orva and Rowland Wiley appear to have visited the Oregon Coast, including the Maple Leaf Cheese Factory. This post confirms Maple Leaf joined with Clover Leaf and Holstein to form the Tillamook Cheese Cooperative in 1949. This set the stage for a major rift in 1963, when Red Clover and Tillamook County Dairy Association split from Tillamook County Creamery Association. They explained their move in this ad. Apparently the Cheese Wars continued until 1969, when the creameries all united in a single factory. You can read this book to find out the rest of the story.
Arthur Babitz
A Tillamook County resident explained to me that in the early days cheese factories needed to be close to the dairies so the milk wouldn’t spoil– hence all the factories around the county. Refrigeration and transportation changes the picture, creating the economics favoring a single factory.
Thorn
Thankfully it ended in a “buy parmesan” agreement.