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AUDIE CORNISH, BYLINE: The White House is coming to the aid of farmers hurt by its own hard-line trade policies. And welcome to PLANET MONEY. It was - some of it almost taste like natural cheddar. 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. Cave cheese is any cheese that is ripened within a cave or cave-like environment, where consistently low temperatures and high levels of humidity are perfect for supporting the chemical reactions that take place in the cheese aging process. Hogwarts, who? See. MALONE: Even if that bite just looks like some delicious cheese. NOVAKOVIC: So the way this program works, literally, is the federal government puts out a piece of paper that says, we will buy as much cheese, butter or nonfat dry milk as you want to sell to us at these prices. Government . The United States Postal Service and the United States Environmental Protection Agency lease spaces within SubTropolis, the United States Postal Service for its collectible stamp operations and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for their Region-7 Training and Logistics Center. SNOOP DOGG: (Rapping) And we ghetto like a [expletive] hot buttered toast in the mornin' with some government cheese. The bunker complex was a secure U.S. government storage facility from World War II until 2013. JUNOT DIAZ: Clear the government cheese from the refrigerator. By Emily Baron Cadloff Global Research, May 30, 2022 Modern Farmer 25 May 2022 Region: USA Theme: Global Economy Pretty quickly the small opening expanded into a paved, two-lane road running through a cavern with ceilings high enough to accommodate a tractor-trailer. [3] The National Archives and Records Administration also leases space for a Federal Records Center. MALONE: The government cheese caves started to empty out. NOVAKOVIC: The federal government wouldn't have the foggiest idea what to do with tanker loads of milk. The 55,000 sq ft underground storage facility is the world's largest underground business complex. Sign up for KCUR's Creative Adventure Email, Kansas City's new airport terminal carries on the legacy of a 10-year-old who fought for inclusivity, Want to explore Waldo? It was ready to start buying cheese. government cheese caves kansas citysr latch using nor gate truth table. MALONE: Today's episode was produced by Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi, Nick Fountain and Rhaina Cohen. glimpse into the void but a modern-day viewing is near-impossible. Want more adventures like this? The 55,000,000-square-foot, 1,100-acre underground storage facility is believed to be the worlds largest site of its kind. DUFFIN: But cheese just doesn't travel well. We depend on ad revenue to craft and curate stories about the worlds hidden wonders. As a busy mother of one crazy kid, two cats, and two geckos, they write whenever there is spare time. And you turn it, and you pull out a core of cheese. Sign up for our email, delivered twice a week. 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: 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. No, it isn't money but actually cheese, 1.4 billion pounds of it to be exact, stored in a cave in Missouri. And though the world may not imagine Kansas City as big in the underground scene our ever-expanding streetcar system still operates where the sun shines the limestone around these parts was shaped by glaciers and rivers and makes for good mining. By clicking Sign up, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider The USDA has a large presence in Kansas City, Missouri, and when it found itself with millions of pounds of surplus dairy and needed a safe, climate-controlled place to put it all, it started to search locally. So the thing that the government was concerned about is what's called commercial displacement. MALONE: So instead, the cheddar cheese was processed - that helps it keep longer - and then it was repackaged in two and five-pound, like, bricks. MALONE: Yes. MALONE: Within five years, the government was storing two pounds of cheese for every single American citizen. Born and raised Kansan, Clarisa has lived in both tiny towns and cities during their time here in the Sunflower State. And the resulting demand just pushes the price of milk up. And do you, like, smack your forehead? SubTropolis is used by around 50 businesses and organizations, for a variety of purposes. Its oddly fascinating! ASCHEBROCK: I traveled 39 states, and I was gone as long as 10 weeks at a time doing that. Have you seen these caves before? DUFFIN: So the basic question was, what kinds of milk products can the government buy and store? The Washington Post reported that the interest and storage costs for all that dairy was costing around $1 million a day. As strange as this predicament might seem, the U.S. is far from the only country to artificially stabilize agricultural prices by stockpiling food products. NOVAKOVIC: Well, probably, you know, close to a hundred percent are able. 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. SNOOP DOGG: You don't buy it. How we got to this point is a long story, and it starts during a national dairy shortage in the 1970s. allegiant flights from sioux falls to mesa az; missouri cheese caves wikipedia. PHIL HARTMAN: (As character) Matt, we're ready for you. MARTHA STEWART: Where do you buy government cheese? Karen's doing the dance. The brick structure 9th & State calls home is one of a few left standing since those raucous Paris of the Plains days. As we unloaded the caves full of this stuff, government cheese started to show up everywhere - food banks and schools, military mess halls. But this was not putting even a dent in the surplus. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: That's government cheese. There is a. And then on the other side, the government tried to replace some of their artificial demand for milk with new real demand for milk. DUFFIN: After the break - how the government finally got out of this mess and why the government may be getting back into the cheese game. Springfield Underground, an Erlen Group Company is a commercial industrial park with the advantage of underground storage. But I am in favor of giving farmers an equal break. Theres evidence the second story was a ballroom, complete with a stage, dumbwaiter and box office window. A grader, where you do quality checks on it. In response to this dairy shortage and 30% inflation . Top editors give you the stories you want delivered right to your inbox each weekday. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: A state official estimated 300,000 people will get a taste of today's cheese. Just dont forget your pillar number. 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. 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. Sign up for our newsletter and enter to win the second edition of our book. He's been working here since the 1970s, since the cheese debacle. Strong Distilling, the only known legal distillery operating in a cave, and catch a "Cave Concert" while you're there. DUFFIN: This is why there is also a community of people who are still obsessed with government cheese - Internet chat boards trying to find something comparable, restaurants claiming they have a recipe for it. And it took a few years, but a flood of cheese starts to come in. DUFFIN: Nevertheless, when Carter got elected, he goes all in. How would you like to work underground? And he tells me, these were never government-owned caves. And he says getting rid of caves full of grade-A government cheese was an economically tricky issue. So how in the world did the U.S. end up with a mountain of slowly molding cheese? MALONE: By this point, Jimmy Carter was out of office. There is currently about $85 million earmarked to buy dairy and distribute it to places like schools and food banks. DUFFIN: The USDA figured out that if they paid about 39 bucks for a 40-pound block of cheese, then it would have this ripple effect. We literally paid them money to stop producing milk. 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. There are these massive columns, and it looks like something the "Lord Of The Rings" dwarves built. The caves were largely abandoned after the city's building boom stopped, Hasan said. What would the government do if you drove this into downtown Washington and said, here you go? ASCHEBROCK: Now, I'm not sure if you know - if you've ever seen a 500-pound steel barrel of cheese. Either one should get you a higher price. San Francisco is 1 of 3 cities in which needy people lined up to get the surplus cheese. Follow us on Twitter to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders. You wont be bored on this one-of-a-kind road trip! The government would buy up, say, massive amounts of corn or wheat and then just throw it into a silo until we needed it for some reason. MALONE: Yeah. DUFFIN: Lever 1, lower the supply - you could do what they do in Canada and say - hey, no more milk - you can only produce so much milk. The Trump administration says today it will make an estimated $12 billion in government assistance available. Nevertheless, dairy surpluses still very much exist. DUFFIN: By the early 1980s, the dairy support program was costing taxpayers around $2 billion a year. Its first FRC opened in 1997 beneath Lee's Summit, and another opened in 2003 under Lenexa. BOB ASCHEBROCK: Yes. MALONE: Government cheese became a symbol of a crappy government handout. It was a big enough number that it sounded like one of these campaign promises that you really didn't expect they would actually fulfill. Like, are you the most picky cheese-eater in your group of friends? The 55,000,000-square-foot, 1,100-acre underground storage facility is believed to be the world's largest site of its kind. In fact, it has trademarked the phrase "World's Largest Underground Business Complex." NOVAKOVIC: (Laughter) Well, that was the unintended consequence that was fun, but the bite came in terms of how much it cost for that opportunity. MALONE: One of the ways Carter proposed giving farmers an equal break was to raise the price of milk by about 6 cents per gallon, which was kind of a lot at the time. Many tenants at . DUFFIN: OK. NOVAKOVIC: Yeah. Onandaga Cave is one of the most gorgeous underground places in Missouri. You'll receive your first newsletter soon! UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: The retail price of milk is going up more than 6 cents a gallon - soon. 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. Kansas City, MO 64112. Search Query Show Search Podcasts & Shows MALONE: Bob Aschebrock spent 30 years as a USDA cheese inspector. To do so, however, required a serious upfront investment. DUFFIN: Yes, this is a real job. DUFFIN: Government cheese starts to show up in all kinds of popular culture. To the cheese cave. And the United States Postal Service's Philatelic Sales Divison, the national distribution center for . Syed E. Hasan, a geosciences professor emeritus at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, said the "very pure" limestone was ideal for cement production to shore up the city's rapid expansion at that time. Have you ever explored a cave in Kansas before? Secretive Experiences Sample spirits made by S.D. Kenny Malone is a correspondent for NPR's Planet Moneypodcast. ASCHEBROCK: Nope. MALONE: The idea was that if you give this food to people who suffer from food insecurity, then maybe it is going to go to somebody who wasn't going to buy cheese anyway so you're not hurting the market as much. Get more stories delivered right to your email. MALONE: Right. And the resulting demand just pushes the price of milk up. 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? A cave in Kansas formerly used to store government cheese. 4701 Wyandotte Street. It sounds amazing. ASCHEBROCK: But then we had the issue with storing the stuff. The Cheese Grotto isn't just about cheese storageit also allows you to age cheese at home. That was pretty good. It's got its flaws. Word is the tunnel sustained water damage, so time will tell if it sees the light of day. ASCHEBROCK: I'm not running down Velveeta, but I'll tell you, the government processed loaf was 10 times - 100 times better. MALONE: For a lot of people who grew up in the 1970s and '80s, you cannot overstate how influential government cheese became. And thus, you won't be flooding anyone's market. Leading up to the Second World War, dairy was used in this very patriotic waystrengthening our bodies to fight the war.. The government tiptoed back into the cheese business in 2019 when the Trump administration said it was using the CCC program again to provide large subsidies to offset the effects of its trade. He is now a dairy economist at Cornell University. MALONE: Dan Callahan worked here in the 1970s and says one day, the U.S. government rented a ton of cave space, and a ton of cheddar cheese started to show up. Lawmakers worried that any blow to the nations dairy farmers could lead to drastic shortages down the line. That number, though, pales in. The Rieger family went into banking and the West Bottoms distillery was paved over. Family-run for more than a century, this pizzeria makes a unique mustard pie. 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. When maple syrup supplies run low, Canada taps into its strategic reserve. 1. DUFFIN: Or you can try to get your surplus goods to people who were not going to buy it anyway. Oh, boy - here we go. Cheese-makers buy more milk. Share your experiences in the comment section below. Try the frozen treat that inspired Arrested Development's famous banana stand. NOVAKOVIC: Butter was one, nonfat dry milk and cheese - and in particular, cheddar-type cheese. And Congress is like wait - no, we also love the farmers. And so they try to hire more cheese graders. 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. 's homemade newspaper, Neighborhood News. USCIS opened its National Records Center in a cave in Lee's Summit, Missouri, in 1999. 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. ANDY NOVAKOVIC: Exactly. By 1984, the U.S. storage facilities contained 1.2 billion pounds, or roughly five pounds of cheese for every American. MALONE: Right - very, very expensive cheese. SubTropolis, a 55 million-square-foot limestone cave which houses a range of businesses underground in Kansas City. And as the historic structure theyd purchased was being repaired, Andy Rieger and crew found an eight-foot high, 400-foot-long tunnel beneath it. DUFFIN: Like, hey, people of America, wouldn't you like to drink more milk? And as of March 31, the U.S. still has 1.4 billion pounds of cheese in cold storageonly now its owned by private companies. 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. Yes, that is a lot of cheese. The government was demanding an unnatural amount of milk and so farmers were supplying an unnatural amount of milk. NOVAKOVIC: You've got two levers you can pull on. 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. As with any commodity, the demand for dairy fluctuates, yet the nature of dairy production makes it challenging to quickly ramp up or down production in response. It has a grid of 16ft (4.9m) high, 40ft (12m) wide tunnels separated by 25ft (7.6m) square limestone pillars created by the room and pillar method of hard rock mining. Imagine watching lines of people wait around to be handed a giant block of moldy, bright orange cheese. DAN CALLAHAN: No, I've never thought about it. (Dean Russell/Here & Now) This article is more than 4 years old. Original reels of Hollywood blockbusters "The Wizard of Oz" and "Gone with the Wind" are stored in the caves. DUFFIN: And if you're a cheese seller and you hear this - that someone is going to buy your cheese at this high price - you're like, well, I'm going to sell them my crappiest cheese at that price. Park University in the Kansas City suburb of Parkville has dozens of classrooms and offices in the caves and rents out other underground space to businesses. Callahan says it took up about a half an acre of space. Layer by Layer: A Mexico City Culinary Adventure, Sacred Granaries, Kasbahs and Feasts in Morocco, Monster of the Month: The Hopkinsville Goblins, Writing the Food Memoir: A Workshop With Gina Rae La Cerva, Reading the Urban Landscape With Annie Novak, How to Grow a Dye Garden With Aaron Sanders Head, Making Scents: Experimental Perfumery With Saskia Wilson-Brown, Indigenous Desserts of Turtle Island With Mariah Gladstone, University of Massachusetts Entomology Collection, The Frozen Banana Stands of Balboa Island, The Paratethys Sea Was the Largest Lake in Earths History, How Communities Are Uncovering Untold Black Histories, The Medieval Thieves Who Used Cats, Apes, and Turtles as Accomplices, THIS ARTICLE IS ADAPTED FROM THE MAY 21, 2022, EDITION OF GASTRO OBSCURAS FAVORITE THINGS NEWSLETTER. Limestone mine in the bluffs above the Missouri River in Kansas City, MO, US, Learn how and when to remove this template message, United States Environmental Protection Agency, National Archives and Records Administration, "SubTropolis | Industrial Space for Lease in Kansas City", "Bloomberg.com 2015-02-04 Welcome to Subtropolis The Business Complex Buried Under Kansas City", "Archives.gov 2018-02-26 Kansas City, MO Federal Records Center", SubTropolis Technology Center home site (Hunt Midwest), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=SubTropolis&oldid=1140599869, Buildings and structures in Kansas City, Missouri, Articles lacking in-text citations from January 2020, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia cave articles with unreferenced coordinates, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 20 February 2023, at 21:12. MALONE: Releasing a tsunami of surplus cheddar the wrong way would push the price of cheese and milk way down. Oh, yeah. Let us know. A cave (also known as a cavern) is a common terrain feature that generates in the Overworld and the Nether. SubTropolis is a ginormous man-made cave in the bluffs above the Missouri River in Kansas City. Like, this is the original bridge to nowhere. Beneath the bar, theres a hollow place in the wall that looks to have been covered up. Why Did the U.S. Government Amass More Than a Billion Pounds of Cheese? In 2003 the Archives opened an underground FRC facility in Lenexa, Kansas. But remember; the raw ingredients were grade A cheddar cheese, some of it personally certified by Bob Aschebrock. Caves are usually found underground. But this is what gave us, you know, the got milk and the milk mustache and all those kind of iconic programs that we remember. Rather, the "caves" are part of a 3.2-million-square-foot warehouse under part of Springfield.. In fact, he remembers the exact room it went into. MALONE: Now, to be fair, that's probably not enough to start filling caves again. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: A state official estimated 300,000 people will get a taste of today's cheese. The main brewing cellar, now outfitted with seating areas, a bar and raised stage, reaches 55 feet underground. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. The USDA helped "cut the glut" then by purchasing $20 million worth of fresh cheese. This is Dan Callahan. All rights reserved. Leilas Hair Museum, located in Independence, is one of the most unusual places in Missouri. The surplus dairy products now in storage have a market value of $3 billion. Do you or does someone you know work at SubTropolis? Experience History Aboard A Guided Trolley Tour Of St. Louis, Missouri, Few People Know About This Missouri Nature Area With Some Of The Midwests Largest Glades, Missouris Worlds Of Fun Has A Brand New Roller Coaster Thats Opening In 2023, This Candy Store in Missouri Was Ripped Straight From The Pages Of A Fairytale, This Ride Through An Old Lead Mine In Missouri Will Take You Back In Time, 10 Places In Missouri That Will Make You Wish You Lived Underground, Most People in Missouri Have No Idea This Unique Tunnel Exists, 12 Of The Most Enchanting Man-Made Wonders In Missouri, 13 weirdest places you can possibly go in Missouri, road trip to Missouris best abandoned places. NOVAKOVIC: Yeah. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. In the 2000s, you could still take an official tour and potentially find a way in for a D.I.Y. Cheeseproclub.com. Lemp Brewery, located in St. Louis, is another unique place to explore. Known as the Springfield Underground, this is a cheese cave of epic proportions covering a . 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. It's going up because the government MALONE: And do you - you hear of it. It is more than a food that. Pour the dissolved yeast into the well and add enough warm water to make a soft dough. YOU CAN SIGN UP HERE. 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. 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. Unfortunately, your shopping bag is empty. HOME; INTERIORS; EXTERIORS; OFFICE & PORTRAITS; PUBLICITY/EVENTS; CONSTRUCTION; INFO We are @planetmoney. If you loved visiting this stunning spot, take a trip to Fisher Cave in Meramec State Park. If the girl's MALONE: Government cheese also shows up in tons of songs. I mean, every warehouse in Wisconsin was full. MALONE: One part of the solution then was to gently get that milk supply down. Youll have to climb down to get to it, led mysteriously by a sequence of ramps and labyrinthine walkways. 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 . You just have to follow us on Instagram. What are the most unusual places in Missouri? Kraft Foods, the multinational conglomerate that makes countless grocery products in addition to cheese, is about none of that, however. KANSAS CITY, Missouri (AP) A mother is in custody after her two children were found barefoot, dirty, and living in a wooden shipping crate in an underground cave part of a massive subterranean network carved out beneath Kansas City. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The great cheese giveaway began today in California. An eye-opening journey through the history, culture, and places of the culinary world. THIS ARTICLE IS ADAPTED FROM THE MAY 21, 2022, EDITION OF GASTRO OBSCURAS FAVORITE THINGS NEWSLETTER. https://bit.ly/2CdCooV Theorists, did you know the government is hiding caves full of cheese from us? Limestone caves in the Kansas City area have been used to store immigration records for years. MALONE: Bob Aschebrock was one of the government's cheese graders. Even the beverage distributors, they had cheese in the storage. I started in 1967 with the USDA, and I was hired as a cheese grader. President Jimmy Carter wanted to help the dairy farmers. It is estimated that Kansas has more than 700 and caves, and almost 350 are in the Red Hills. There's also a trail leading to the top of the area above the caves if you want to keep going! DUFFIN: Our supervising producer is Alex Goldmark, and our editor is Bryant Urstadt. If you havent spent a day wandering the streets of Weston, Missouri, youre missing out. We hope so. MALONE: When we have a surplus of grain or soy or even powdered milk, we can send that stuff overseas as part of foreign aid. 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. But the government then actually has to figure out a way to step into this market and make it happen. 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. 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. And they go to their bosses. Want to explore Waldo? Unlike corn or wheat, however, milk needed to be converted into more shelf-stable forms, specifically butter, dehydrated skim milk powder, and cheese. 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. JIMMY CARTER: Now, although I am a farmer, I'm not in favor of guaranteeing farmers a profit. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. is cottonseed oil safe for nut allergy The government has tended to stay away from buying cheese as a solution. The air is cool and the barroom massive almost cathedral-like. The National Archives' Central Plains regional archives is moving into the heart of Kansas City's cultural and historic area. 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. 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? [1] The complex contains almost 10.5 miles (16.9km) of illuminated, paved roads and several miles of railroad track. The easier solution - maybe - the government could just start buying a ton of milk themselves. His creation, SubTropolis, is the largest of the underground facilities with nearly 6 million square feet of industrial space for lease. As recently as August of 2020, the Department of Agriculture announced the Cheese Purchase Program. MALONE: So to raise the price of milk, the government basically opened up the world's largest cheese shop - you know, and powdered milk and butter, too. MALONE: The government is creating a price floor. 41, no. In 1949, the Agricultural Act allowed a government agency to buy up dairy products to stabilize prices. But there is a chance that the government may be in the business of government cheese again. And so they pass a law saying that they want the price of milk to go up automatically every six months. 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. It's only about a 3-inch-in-diameter hole. 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. MALONE: Are you pretty annoying to eat cheese with? Kraft Cheese Cave, Springfield. BOB ASCHEBROCK: Yes. [4]. With temperatures maintained at 25F and 35F, staff have nicknamed the space the "Ice Cube." Grab a latte at the birthplace of modern American skateboarding. 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. Help yourself. Long situated in a warehouse-style facility far from the major business district of Kansas . Like Atlas Obscura and get our latest and greatest stories in your Facebook feed. You could destroy the surplus, but that looks pretty bad. 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. And the Ronald Reagan team was stuck dealing with these caves full of cheese.