It is one of those small towns you may have never have visited — or even know where it is, but if you love cheese, you know the name: Tillamook. It’s a classic small town on the northwest coast of Oregon. With an average of 88 inches of of rain per year, rich volcanic soil, and tall grasses as far as the eye can see, this is a valley dairy farmers dream about, but so do the tourists who come to visit the Tillamook coast and the scenery around Tillamook Bay. The county motto is “cheese, trees and the ocean breeze.”

Tillamook was named after a Native American tribe that spoke the Salishan language and lived here until the 19th century.. Since the 1840’s, settlers from the east poured into Oregon’s Willamette Valley crossing on the Oregon Trail.  Most were farmers looking for good land. By the 1850’s many pioneers literally walked over the coast range and settled in the Tillamook Valley. A wave of Swiss dairy farmers found this place and farming just took off.  DJ and Jamie Josi are 5th generation farmers with a Swiss heritage. They call this an extraordinary climate and soil for farming, and long ago their families helped create and joined the Tillamook County Creamery Association.

The Co-Op began in 1909 and now it’s a giant operation known for it’s famed cheddar cheese and ice cream. But in the early days, with few roads and not railroad yet built to the coast, the farmers build a schooner named the Morning Star to transport butter to Portland.  A replica of the Morning Star was built and now sits in front of the Creamery. The Tillamook Creamery has built a new visitors center and sees a million tourists come through each year, to learn how the famous cheese is made — and to sample the product.

Come summer, Tillamook sees an invasion of tourists driving up and down highway 101 along the coast. Along Tillamook Bay, you find the fishing town of Giribaldi and a gem of the old days of life on the rails. The Oregon Coast Scenic Railroad is using a century old steam locomotive to take tourists on one of the most spectacular stretches of track in the country.

This was once a freight and passenger line — bringing passengers from the other side of the mountains — and lumber out of the hills. Now, for part of the year, it takes several trips between Giribaldi and the beach community of Rockaway Beach each day and some special sunset trips north to the town of Wheeler on Nehalem Bay.

Another most visit spot is a piece of World War Two history in Tillamook. The Tillamook Air Museum is famous not just for some of the flying machines inside the museum — but the building itself. It’s one of the largest buildings in the world. During the war, the US Navy used giant blimps to search for enemy submarines off the coast. In 1942, the Navy began construction of 17 wooden hangers up and down the west coast. The Tillamook Valley was a perfect spot — right near the coastline. This is the only blimp hanger the public can visit, because it’s a museum.