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. And the resulting demand just pushes the price of milk up. Before that, he was a reporter for WNYC's Only Humanpodcast. Kraft Cheese Cave, Springfield. SubTropolis is a ginormous man-made cave in the bluffs above the Missouri River in Kansas City. DUFFIN: So much cheese that Bob starts having to spend more and more time on the road because he has to actually go to the cheese to grade it. The cheese came in handy for Ronald Reagan's "government cheese" program, which released 30 million pounds of the lactose-laden dairy product (paywall) to any state that applied. And the resulting demand just pushes the price of milk up. ASCHEBROCK: I'm not running down Velveeta, but I'll tell you, the government processed loaf was 10 times - 100 times better. You need a hacksaw. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: That's government cheese. Then, in the 1970s, everything started to go haywire. But the surplus was growing so fast that 30 million pounds barely made a dent. Posted on June 16, 2022 by June 16, 2022 by I am in an old, converted limestone mine. MALONE: You were hired as someone to show up with a metal thing ASCHEBROCK: Not - no, no, no. To the cheese cave. Try the frozen treat that inspired Arrested Development's famous banana stand. On a given day, kids scramble over its playground, neighbors walk their dogs through its green acres, and teens meet for pick-up games on its soccer fields and volleyball courts. We can't find a market for it. Gastro Obscura covers the worlds most wondrous food and drink. NOVAKOVIC: We took a small amount of money from every dairy farmer, collected on every pound of milk they sold, and we created the National Dairy Board. Have you been inside? There's also a trail leading to the top of the area above the caves if you want to keep going! MALONE: Now, to be fair, that's probably not enough to start filling caves again. To learn more about the best caves in Missouri, read our article here. NOVAKOVIC: Well, I think there's two basic lessons. And he says the government could not just release a flood of surplus cheese onto the market because it would crush cheese producers. NOVAKOVIC: It's really hard to balance what you want to do socially or politically with what you can get away with economically. It was this spectacle of millions of pounds of expensive cheese being processed and given away that created a popular cultural icon and an example of bad government spending. Offer subject to change without notice. [2], The mine naturally maintains temperatures between 65 and 70F (18 and 21C) year-round. Go to the shop Go to the shop. Well, sort of. You'll receive your first newsletter soon! We've got 60 million of these that the government owns with mold. But their purpose has shifted over the years. If the girl's MALONE: Government cheese also shows up in tons of songs. The government was demanding an unnatural amount of milk and so farmers were supplying an unnatural amount of milk. 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. We literally paid them money to stop producing milk. The bunker complex was a secure U.S. government storage facility from World War II until 2013. A miner from Colorado named Charles Griffee excavated these caves in the 1880s, but the land was later bought by the Faris family. Like Atlas Obscura and get our latest and greatest stories in your Facebook feed. And he says getting rid of caves full of grade-A government cheese was an economically tricky issue. They feature an abundance of ores, as well as hostile mobs that spawn in the darkness. The bar stools are original and survived some of the flooding. MALONE: And you can taste all of those things in a piece of cheese? MALONE: The government is creating a price floor. Thank you! ", (SOUNDBITE OF NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK SONG, "YOU GOT IT (THE RIGHT STUFF)"). The Trump administration says today it will make an estimated $12 billion in government assistance available. But that does not mean the government had fixed the problem. MALONE: Bob Aschebrock spent 30 years as a USDA cheese inspector. Nevertheless, dairy surpluses still very much exist. MALONE: The government of the United States of America had caves full of cheddar cheese. MALONE: And then within five years, the government was spending billions of dollars filling caves with cheese that they could not get rid of fast enough. It has a grid of 16 feet high, 40 foot wide tunnels separated by 25 foot square limestone pillars created by the room and pillar method of hard rock mining. DUFFIN: But maybe government cheese's most surreal moment came on a television show where Martha Stewart cooks stuff with Snoop Dog. And to be fair, it was processed cheese kind of like a brick of Velveeta. Search Query Show Search Podcasts & Shows Long situated in a warehouse-style facility far from the major business district of Kansas . The Rieger family went into banking and the West Bottoms distillery was paved over. Today, the National Archives has four underground facilities. The 55,000,000-square-foot, 1,100-acre underground storage facility is believed to be the worlds largest site of its kind. More Info Directions. 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. 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. One particularly large pile of it resides in the former limestone quarries underneath Springfield, Missouri, where Kraft Heinz keeps a considerable cache of cheese in these temperature-controlled facilities. Born from tragedy, the remote national park is bringing tourism and other changes. Well, we got some real crafty guys that started putting 40-pound blocks of special cheese right under the bunghole. Very, very expensive cheese. Embark on a wonderful cave tour and learn all about its history. DUFFIN: Or you can try to get your surplus goods to people who were not going to buy it anyway. Cheese-makers buy more milk. The block earned its name due to the number of saloons found between the Kansas-Missouri state line and Genessee Street at the turn of the century. Through the years, Kansas Citians have utilized a number of buried passageways for transportation, illegal (at the time) or otherwise. While the popular cheese has changed a lot since then, from access limited to royalty in 1625 to the confinement of "government cheddar" during World War II, the caves are constant . Steven Rodriquez/Flickr Have you seen these caves before? But as Kansas Citians began to rely more on buses and their own vehicles in the 1940s and 1950s, the 8th Street tunnel ceased operations. Melt Two tbps of butter into a skillet, then add the onion, garlic and mushrooms. Westons downtown district was established in 1837, so theres a lot of history here. It's deteriorating. The Campground recently unearthed pieces of the distillerys tile floor as they were renovating their own bar. warehouses in Germany, Belgium, and France. 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. BOB ASCHEBROCK: Yes. government cheese caves kansas citysr latch using nor gate truth table. There was an incredible press conference where Agriculture Secretary John Block went before reporters and held up a giant hunk of cheese like it was a national emergency. 7 Awe-Inspiring Drone Views That Will Show Off Kansas Like Never Before, Theres An Incredible Meteor Shower Happening This Summer And Kansas Has A Front Row Seat, The Underrated Natural Wonder Every Kansan Should See At Least Once, The Breathtaking Overlook In Kansas That Lets You See For Miles And Miles, 8 Roads With The Best Windshield Views In All Of Kansas, Theres A Geological Wonder That Youd Never Expect To Find In Kansas, The Beautiful Spot In Kansas Where You Can See Into Three Other States At Once, 9 Amazing Natural Wonders Hiding In Plain Sight In Kansas No Hiking Required, this cool hiking trail that has another cave. The way it melts for a hamburger - there is nothing better. They also house a massive frozen-food storage complex, a paintball business, and a US Postal Service facility that stores and distributes new stamps. Like SubTropolis, the strangely sterile space is separated by humungous numbered pillars. Decades of propping up the dairy industryby buying up surplus. No purchase necessary. This little-known cave area in Kansas is the perfect opportunity to explore something that many Kansans might not have heard of before. Thanks for listening. But milk doesn't store well, so the government bought other dairy products. And so they try to hire more cheese graders. We know there are a few places where youre allowed to explore public caves, but theyre sometimes hard to find or access. It certainly was on the edge of that. Like us on Facebook to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders. There were 40-pound blocks and 500-pound barrels. So the clever folks at USDA said, what if we went down the supply chain one step NOVAKOVIC: And looked at dairy products that are storable? Currently, more than 7,300,000 square feet (680,000m2) is occupied and 6,700,000 square feet (620,000m2) are available for future expansion. The government was buying 1 in every 4 pounds of the country's cheddar cheese. The complex contains almost 7 miles of illuminated, paved roads and several miles of railroad track. Andy Novakovic spent his summers as a kid working on his grandparents' dairy farm in Wisconsin. give poor Americans a slice of the cheese surplus., exactly popular with all of its recipients. as well as other partner offers and accept our, http://eapcontent.ap.org/jpg/2015/20150914/16/be46cf305fa20029820f6a70670013cf.jpg?contentid=be46cf305fa20029820f6a70670013cf/fmt=jpg/role=Preview/reldt=2015-09-14T16:35:59/media=Photo/recordid=a772a7d9f93f488487ec5a05e64f976a/itemid=a772a7d9f93f488487ec5a05e64f976a/objfilename=preview.jpg/authToken=eNotikEKwyAURE%2bkzNf4NQuhV4lWwUVj0Ei78PC10FnM48Gb6eNZG%2bsIO4OwRg4zFh%2fSxjFrCJMPJQC1C6eQBR8WbFemY56j%2b1jPu5Uw7tr6I4xeztTX9fJMTcb6mtfb%2f5UMZrk8b5LAkn4k8wXMhif%2b&token=1442512801_9D4E1758BD6D116C2F559647389B3542, NOW WATCH: Incredible video inside Hang Son Doong the largest cave in the world.