Other facilities like SubTropolis exist although not on the same scale, such as the abandoned mine in Butler, Pennsylvania used by Corbis and the US Federal Government for secure storage. PHIL HARTMAN: (As character) Matt, we're ready for you. MALONE: You were hired as someone to show up with a metal ASCHEBROCK: Where you do quality checks on it. 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. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. Our operators are standing by. A large portion is also owned by companies, who . And you can drive your car right into it. The U.S. has too much cheese 1.4 billion pounds of it to be exact. See. Add 16 oz of macaroni, or shells to the pressure cooker and enough water to cover the noodles completely. He spent 30 years testing and tasting cheese for the United States government. 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. A NASA employee needing an area to test sensitive navigational instruments was among the first official cave occupants. ASCHEBROCK: And that's what you grade. Share your experiences in the comment section below. While many of the caves feature paved roads and utilities, other areas consist of dirt floors and uncontrolled entrances. MALONE: You were hired as someone to show up with a metal thing ASCHEBROCK: Not - no, no, no. But one day, the government rented out a ton of cave space, and then cheddar cheese started to show up, massive blocks of the stuff, pallet after pallet. Caves are usually found underground. Expand All. And it took a few years, but a flood of cheese starts to come in. We hope so. MALONE: Karen's doing the dance. DUFFIN: In the pantheon of milk-related economic disasters, there is one that rises above the rest. Get more stories delivered right to your email. 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. 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. https://bit.ly/2CdCooV Theorists, did you know the government is hiding caves full of cheese from us? DUFFIN: It is this moment that government cheese truly enters the American bloodstream. Well, sort of. DUFFIN: OK. Want more adventures like this? With these historical details in mind, whos to say there isnt a tunnel beneath 9th & State that was used to ferry booze between Missouri and Kansas? It certainly was on the edge of that. The way it melts for a hamburger - there is nothing better. All rights reserved. They feature an abundance of ores, as well as hostile mobs that spawn in the darkness. Melt Two tbps of butter into a skillet, then add the onion, garlic and mushrooms. Known as the Springfield Underground, this is a cheese cave of epic proportions covering a . PublishedSeptember 7, 2018 at 7:20 AM CDT. And then on the other side, the government tried to replace some of their artificial demand for milk with new real demand for milk. The Washington Post reported that the interest and storage costs for all that dairy was costing around $1 million a day. Lawmakers worried that any blow to the nations dairy farmers could lead to drastic shortages down the line. All rights reserved. It was built by a German immigrant named John Georgian, who instead of relying on those trusty limestone caves weve come to know and love dug out his own brewery space beneath Weston. Kansas City, MO 64112. In fact, he remembers the exact room it went into. It's got its flaws. Which makes for a thriving underground business community, as unnerving as a giant hole in the side of a bluff may be. In the 2000s, you could still take an official tour and potentially find a way in for a D.I.Y. Offer available only in the U.S. (including Puerto Rico). MALONE: The government cheese caves started to empty out. NOVAKOVIC: Well, probably, you know, close to a hundred percent are able. SubTroplis is definitely one of the most incredible underground places in Missouri. "If they haven't been used, no one knows what state of deterioration they are in," Hasan said. The Federal Government stores tons of surplus cheese and other dairy products in the mines. His creation, SubTropolis, is the largest of the underground facilities with nearly 6 million square feet of industrial space for lease. The new iteration of J. Rieger & Co. and what would become a tasting room, lounge, speakeasy and outdoor beer garden began taking shape in 2014. A slice of Kraft cheese is going to be less about. MALONE: Until there was no more room for you to be in this room. Visitors to the underworld will even find a whiskey distillery within the mined area, which stretches for more than 1 million square feet. Central Plains Regional Archives Moves to Historic Downtown Location Spring 2009, vol. MALONE: And I'm Kenny Malone. The underground industrial park known as SubTroplis opened for business in 1964 in an excavated mine below Kansas City, Mo., attracting tenants with the lure of lower energy costs and cheap rents . G. DEP: (Rapping) Can't buy trees with government cheese. Back in 2018, The New York Times did a profile on Gene Peters, chief executive of Rosnet, a restaurant software company out of Parkville, Missouri. 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Some of the cave openings are so big that a big truck can get through them, while others are so tight that it would be challenging even for an earthworm to sneak through. Caves . 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. Its more than a hobby, its a passion.. MALONE: So this leaves a couple of options. DUFFIN: Yes, this is a real job. ASCHEBROCK: Now, I'm not sure if you know - if you've ever seen a 500-pound steel barrel of cheese. MALONE: But this is America. Since 1916, when James Lewis Kraft patented American cheese, the U.S. had the technology to create a cheese product that could last for years. Today, the government still buys and stores cheese for food assistance programs; however, only about 300 . Like, this is the original bridge to nowhere. 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. NOVAKOVIC: To persuade farmers to produce less. ASCHEBROCK: I'm not running down Velveeta, but I'll tell you, the government processed loaf was 10 times - 100 times better. The brick structure 9th & State calls home is one of a few left standing since those raucous Paris of the Plains days. The mine naturally maintains temperatures between 65 and 70 F year-round, making it a great space for a lot of different types of businesses. DUFFIN: OK. Its first FRC opened in 1997 beneath Lee's Summit, and another opened in 2003 under Lenexa. MALONE: You can see pictures of the cheese cave. President Jimmy Carter wanted to help the dairy farmers. MALONE: I'm Kenny Malone. [2], The mine naturally maintains temperatures between 65 and 70F (18 and 21C) year-round. No? Over in West Bottoms (again), 9th & State operates out of an old Pabst Brewery building on a street once known as the Wettest Block in the World. On the north edge of the complex Hunt developed the Worlds of Fun and Oceans of Fun amusement park complex. Gastro Obscura covers the worlds most wondrous food and drink. MALONE: The government asked economists, including Andy Novakovic, to figure out how it could get out of the cheese buying business without devastating the farmers they were trying to help in the first place. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: The great cheese giveaway began today in California. As a busy mother of one crazy kid, two cats, and two geckos, they write whenever there is spare time. SubTropolis is a 55,000,000-square-foot (5,100,000 m 2), 1,100-acre (4.5 km 2) 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.Developed by late Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt via Hunt Midwest Real Estate Development, Inc., it has trademarked the phrase World's Largest . To see the best of them, embark on this road trip to Missouris best abandoned places. Weve written about the 8th Street Tunnel before, and who can blame us? Government agents were in uncharted territory. NOVAKOVIC: One is it's really hard to balance what you want to do socially or politically with what you can get away with economically. That was pretty good. By Emily Baron Cadloff Global Research, May 30, 2022 Modern Farmer 25 May 2022 Region: USA Theme: Global Economy Before that, he was a reporter for Miami's WLRN. I mean ASCHEBROCK: We had cheese in every cold storage in the United States, including the caves in Kansas that were full of that stuff. DUFFIN: (Laughter) That's right. Fortunately, the rock here is soft enough to scratch something out without a lot of effort. NOVAKOVIC: Butter was one, nonfat dry milk and cheese - and in particular, cheddar-type cheese. This area is also a great place to go hiking, camping, and fishing. DUFFIN: But cheese just doesn't travel well. No, it isn't money but actually cheese, 1.4 billion pounds of it to be exact, stored in a cave in Missouri. And welcome to PLANET MONEY. Deep under Springfield, Missouri, lies a cheese cave of industrial proportions, a 2-million-square-foot refrigerated warehouse called Springfield Underground.Since 2008, Kraft Foods has rented . Visit a sweet shop selling one of the first candies ever made and sold in America. It sounds amazing. Kansas City even has special ordinances that govern the use of underground space, including how the roofs must be supported, and about 3,000 to 4,000 people work full-time in the cave system, Hasan said. I mean, it was really, really good product. San Francisco is one of three cities in which needy people lined up to get the surplus cheese. DUFFIN: Our supervising producer is Alex Goldmark, and our editor is Bryant Urstadt. The USDA helped "cut the glut" then by purchasing $20 million worth of fresh cheese. 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." [3] The National Archives and Records Administration also leases space for a Federal Records Center. Follow us on Twitter to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders. DUFFIN: This was not just political pandering. DUFFIN: So the basic question was, what kinds of milk products can the government buy and store? CARTER: But I am in favor of giving farmers an equal break. There is currently about $85 million earmarked to buy dairy and distribute it to places like schools and food banks. Cheese Caves Myth: Debunked. Makes sense, considering the natural limestone ledge bordering the river. It is estimated that Kansas has more than 700 and caves, and almost 350 are in the Red Hills. 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. Today on the show, the story of what happened when the president of the United States decided he was going to help America's farmers by buying milk, lots of milk. Beneath the bar, theres a hollow place in the wall that looks to have been covered up. So getting people to do it was always a challenge. 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. Each year, several foot races are run in the cave system. Its oddly fascinating! Extensive limestone mining in the late 1800s and early 1900s created the millions of square feet of caves that are scattered throughout metropolitan Kansas City, in Kansas and Missouri. SubTropolis, a 55 million-square-foot limestone cave which houses a range of businesses underground in Kansas City. NOVAKOVIC: The federal government wouldn't have the foggiest idea what to do with tanker loads of milk. He says the government was buying powdered milk, butter and cheddar cheese - only grade-A cheddar, though. Ashley Day. Government . Back in the 1880s, after a year of toiling through the bluffs dividing Downtown from West Bottoms, rapid transit pioneer Robert Gillham and a team of workers managed to push the last underground bricks into place. Nevertheless, dairy surpluses still very much exist. ASCHEBROCK: I traveled 39 states, and I was gone as long as 10 weeks at a time doing that. Kenny Malone hails from Meadville, PA where the zipper was invented, where Clark Gables mother is buried and where, in 2007, a wrecking ball broke free from a construction site, rolled down North Main Street and somehow wound up inside the trunk of a Ford Taurus sitting at a red light. 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. Buoyed by items like Wendys dual Double Melt sandwich concept and Taco Bells steak quesadilla, the organization helped boost cheese sales by more than 30 million pounds. While the humble cheese factory looks like any other food processing factory dotting a city's industrial zone, hidden underground is a vast and fiercely guarded network of 13 caves, stretching a . MARTHA STEWART: Where do you buy government cheese? (SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MARTHA & SNOOP'S POTLUCK DINNER PARTY"). The guaranteed milk price, which had been going up automatically every six months, was eventually frozen. The second lesson is you got to pay attention to the unintended consequences because they can come back and bite you and bite you hard. Government cheese is processed cheese provided to welfare beneficiaries Food Stamp recipients and the elderly receiving Social Security in the United States as well as to food banks. The Missouri Penitentiary in Jefferson City is rumored to be riddled with spirits. MALONE: And so our country has a tradition of programs to help farmers. MALONE: The story of government cheese has become a kind of parable of how government intervention in markets can have this, like, butterfly effect. 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. Along with Congress, Carter wanted to raise the price of milk 6 cents per gallon and keep raising it with inflation. About 3.2 acres of available space are added each year as active mining continues. MALONE: Andy is still in the dairy world. Like Atlas Obscura and get our latest and greatest stories in your Facebook feed. $20.00 per adult Kansas City Segway Tour: Art and Glide 80 Recommended Segway Tours from $69.00 per adult SEA LIFE Kansas City Aquarium Admission Ticket 66 Aquariums from $23.65 per adult Kansas City Crossroads Art District and Westside Urban Hike 17 Recommended Adventure Tours from $39.00 per adult Strawberry Hill and Downtown KCK Hike 12 I'm Karen Duffin. DUFFIN: The thing about price controls is that once you start them, they are really, really hard to unwind. By: Anne D Springfield and Kansas City are not even near each other, and 435 is no where near Springfield, this article is quite confusing. In fact, it has trademarked the phrase Worlds Largest Underground Business Complex. It was developed by late Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt via Hunt Midwest Real Estate Development, Inc. Read on to learn more about the largest underground business complex in Missouri. MALONE: At one point, Donnie Wahlberg of the New Kids On The Block said, quote, "there's nothing like it. NOVAKOVIC: Yeah. 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. DUFFIN: And this is what people will remember as government cheese because when a government starts to give away hundreds of millions of pounds of cheese, people notice. The government was demanding an unnatural amount of milk and so farmers were supplying an unnatural amount of milk. ASCHEBROCK: Nope. 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. 1 By Kimberlee N. Ried Enlarge Plan for the National Archives at Kansas City. MALONE: Bob Aschebrock was one of the government's cheese graders. We literally paid them money to stop producing milk. When Hamilton and partner Sean Smith purchased the property in 2021, they also found a locked safe and penny tile beneath green carpeting. Basically the dairy industry is looking to expand its market and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is looking to expand the agricultural economy and they become very intertwined., It helped that the burgeoning field of nutrition science promoted dairy products as essential for both adults and children. MALONE: That is right. Known for its hiking trails (with Missouri River views), wineries and the McCormick distillery, Weston is also home to OMalleys, the oldest bar in Missouri. ANDY NOVAKOVIC: Oh, yeah. If youve been in the cheeky, sophisticated Campground bar, youve set foot where the original J. Rieger & Co. building stood. It's going up because the government MALONE: And do you - you hear of it. So just wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling CALLAHAN: Floor-to-ceiling - and then as you kept filling it, you just worked your way right back out. OnlyInYourState may earn compensation through affiliate links in this article. In 2016, dairy farmers resorted to simply dumping 43 million gallons of milk down the drain. government cheese caves kansas citysr latch using nor gate truth table. Anyway, whats weird is that Peters talks about working beneath Park University in a limestone cave. DUFFIN: You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook - also @planetmoney. Have you seen these caves before? In fact, if you see my shape, you would know that I eat enough to keep the tank full. Yet part of this cheese mountain represents an enduring surplusa very literal representation of the dairy industrys mismatch with the realties of the market. 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The caves were largely abandoned after the city's building boom stopped, Hasan said. Just dont forget your pillar number. Missouri's caves can . Leading up to the Second World War, dairy was used in this very patriotic waystrengthening our bodies to fight the war.. 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. It was - some of it almost taste like natural cheddar. Rather, the "caves" are part of a 3.2-million-square-foot warehouse under part of Springfield.. 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. Jimmy Carter's campaign promise to help farmers in 1976 not only gave us government cheese but also milk mustaches. Farmers also used it to improve soil. Production has increased 3% in the past year, and 29% in the last decade. YOU CAN SIGN UP HERE. 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. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: A state official estimated 300,000 people will get a taste of today's cheese. Posted on June 16, 2022 by June 16, 2022 by MALONE: By this point, Jimmy Carter was out of office. DUFFIN: Like, hey, people of America, wouldn't you like to drink more milk? Karen's doing the dance. And the European Union has a long, scandalous history of accumulating butter mountains, wine lakes, and milk lakesthe latter of which consisted of vast quantities of skim milk powder housed in warehouses in Germany, Belgium, and France. And thus, you won't be flooding anyone's market. The air is cool and the barroom massive almost cathedral-like. 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. Imagine watching lines of people wait around to be handed a giant block of moldy, bright orange cheese. However, when Prohibition was enacted in 1919 via the 18th Amendment, the alcohol purveyor shut its doors.