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. MALONE: So if you wanted to sell cheese to the government, Bob would show up with this, like, hollow rod called a cheese trier. ASCHEBROCK: But then we had the issue with storing the stuff. In 1887, J. Rieger & Co. distillers of top-notch whiskey, vodka and gin put down roots in the Livestock Exchange district of West Bottoms. 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. And the United States Postal Service's Philatelic Sales Divison, the national distribution center for . 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 . Want more adventures like this? By 1984, the U.S. storage facilities contained 1.2 billion pounds, or roughly five pounds of cheese for every American. When the Trump administration decided to pay subsidies to farmers hurt by trade, it reminded NPR's Planet Money podcast team about the time another president tried to help farmers. DUFFIN: Just this week, we finally learned some of the details. Yet part of this cheese mountain represents an enduring surplusa very literal representation of the dairy industrys mismatch with the realties of the market. Consider supporting our work by becoming a member for as little as $5 a month. There is an argument that our country has to be able to produce its own food because if our farmers go out of business and we become reliant on other countries for food, then that is a kind of national security risk. And while it might take up two stories above the ground, co-owner Heather Hamilton wonders if there are remnants of a tunnel leading out of the basement. NOVAKOVIC: It's really hard to balance what you want to do socially or politically with what you can get away with economically. 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. He spent 30 years testing and tasting cheese for the United States government. 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. It is huge. 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. Word is the tunnel sustained water damage, so time will tell if it sees the light of day. Well, sort of. A NASA employee needing an area to test sensitive navigational instruments was among the first official cave occupants. They also house a massive frozen-food storage complex, a paintball business, and a US Postal Service facility that stores and distributes new stamps. But the surplus was growing so fast that 30 million pounds barely made a dent. 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. 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. government cheese caves kansas citysr latch using nor gate truth table. 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. The Missouri Penitentiary in Jefferson City is rumored to be riddled with spirits. But their purpose has shifted over the years. 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. 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? He's been working here since the 1970s, since the cheese debacle. MALONE: Many listeners may remember "Saturday Night Live's" Matt Foley, as played by Chris Farley, the world's worst motivational speaker. And they go to their bosses. NOVAKOVIC: Yeah. SubTropolis, a 55 million-square-foot limestone cave which houses a range of businesses underground in Kansas City. There you go. How do we - how do we get this cat out of the tree? But cheese doesn't travel well, so the government landed on a third option. KENNY MALONE, BYLINE: The year was 1977. Let us know. There are literally train tracks leading into it. Youve heard about the subterranean chamber beneath the land near Worlds of Fun, right? Farmers also used it to improve soil. Before that, he was a reporter for WNYC's Only Humanpodcast. 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? 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. 1 flavor defect he had to look out for was acidity. Although other facilities like SubTropolis exist, there are none on the same such scale. ASCHEBROCK: Will eat any cheese. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: A state official estimated 300,000 people will get a taste of today's cheese. Central Plains Regional Archives Moves to Historic Downtown Location Spring 2009, vol. And the resulting demand just pushes the price of milk up. MALONE: This footage is amazing - just massive crowds of people being handed bricks of cheese. NOVAKOVIC: The federal government wouldn't have the foggiest idea what to do with tanker loads of milk. 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. (SOUNDBITE OF KAZAM'S "ROMANTIQUE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. The walls themselves are limestone, of course. Over the years, the industry has found all sorts of ways to get rid of its excess supplysome more insidious than others. Decades of propping up the dairy industryby buying up surplus milk and turning it into processed commodity cheesehad backfired, hard. MALONE: One part of the solution then was to gently get that milk supply down. It's got its flaws. A cave in Kansas formerly used to store government cheese. 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. 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. The reason why the dairy industry gets such preferential treatment is its status as this uncontested food in the diet, Wiley says. With the economy spiraling, President Jimmy Carter promised to raise the collapsing price of milk, saying, Im giving dairy farmers an equal break., In the late 1970s, when energy prices went crazy and there was this unbelievable period of inflation, things got a little out of control, Novakovi says. (Shouting) Government cheese. NOVAKOVIC: You can imagine the cheese company that's in the business of selling cheese is going to say, hey, what's the deal here? Anyway, the government had its plan in place. 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." MALONE: That is right. Have you seen these caves before? You'll receive your first newsletter soon! "If they haven't been used, no one knows what state of deterioration they are in," Hasan said. The government was buying 1 in every 4 pounds of the country's cheddar cheese. 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. Weve looked and looked at ways to deal with this, but the distribution problems are incredible, a USDA official was quoted as saying. 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. How would you like to work underground? Youll love exploring this amazing geological wonder. We depend on ad revenue to craft and curate stories about the worlds hidden wonders. Which makes for a thriving underground business community, as unnerving as a giant hole in the side of a bluff may be. AUDIE CORNISH, BYLINE: The White House is coming to the aid of farmers hurt by its own hard-line trade policies. You don't do that, huh? 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. 's homemade newspaper, Neighborhood News. SUBSCRIBE for Every Delicious Theory! Looking for more unusual places in Missouri? MALONE: Who's got time for dating when you're traveling around eating cheese everywhere? Sign up for KCUR's Creative Adventure Email. Lever 2, more demand - you could try to convince the public that they want to drink more milk. Steven Rodriquez/Flickr Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. You don't do that, huh? Food Caves in Missouri SubTropolis, Kansas City. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. MALONE: Within five years, the government was storing two pounds of cheese for every single American citizen. Youll have to climb down to get to it, led mysteriously by a sequence of ramps and labyrinthine walkways. Unfortunately, your shopping bag is empty. 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. But there is a chance that the government may be in the business of government cheese again. Theres evidence the second story was a ballroom, complete with a stage, dumbwaiter and box office window. The Country Club Plaza. All rights reserved. San Francisco is one of three cities in which needy people lined up to get the surplus cheese. 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. And what percentage of economists would you say are able to milk a cow by hand? While many of the caves feature paved roads and utilities, other areas consist of dirt floors and uncontrolled entrances. In 1949, the Agricultural Act allowed a government agency to buy up dairy products to stabilize prices. The 43,000,000 square feet structure is owned by Americold and is primarily used for food production. What would the government do if you drove this into downtown Washington and said, here you go? And he tells me, these were never government-owned caves. 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. 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. We don't do milk quotas - no Lever 1. 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. MALONE: Novakovic says the government could have destroyed the cheese. We hope so. They feature an abundance of ores, as well as hostile mobs that spawn in the darkness. This area is also a great place to go hiking, camping, and fishing. You cansign up to receive stories like this in your inbox every Tuesday. And he started floating this idea. Pour the dissolved yeast into the well and add enough warm water to make a soft dough. Lets just call it tunnel vision. Andy Novakovic spent his summers as a kid working on his grandparents' dairy farm in Wisconsin. 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.