Utah's Dairy Dynasty

Utah’s Little Switzerland

Between 1850 and 1900, more than 18,000 white settlers moved into the greater Cache Valley drawn by promise of the rich alluvial soils of the valley floor and irrigation potential of the Bear River and its tributaries. They had followed in the decades after the arrival of fur trappers along the Bear River in the early 1800s, and the violent military removal of the Shoshoni people from the valley. 

Many of the region’s earliest white settlers were European immigrants hailing from countries with established dairy farming traditions, which sparked Cache Valley’s boom as a dairying region in the late 19th century. Local farmers often pooled their milk supplies through cooperatives, which in turn produced cheese and butter. 

By 1912, the Cache Valley was so established as a major western dairy region that the community launched a show and auction now known as the Western Heritage Holstein Cattle Show. It’s celebrated locally each May with a multi-day festival in Richmond called Black and White Days — now the longest running Holstein cattle show west of the Mississippi. 

When fourth-generation dairy farmer Lacey Papageorge described the festival to me, her eyes lit up. “Black and White Days is one of the biggest highlights of my family’s year.” From the hundred or so Holsteins at her family’s Pappys Farms Dairy (they’re also one of Gossner Foods’ local milk suppliers), the Papageorges’ pick their top contenders for the show. 

“We shave their hair and get them all pretty,” she says of preparing both heifers and milk cows for showing. In addition to the awards and recognition that Pappys Farms wins, Papageorge says: “A lot of the dairy community comes together, and we get to celebrate our best animals; it’s a really special time.” 

“We have this great circular economy with Utah agriculture, where we're all working together,” says Papageorge, who is the farmer relations manager for the Dairy West nonprofit. “And a lot of this relates to sustainability,” she says, explaining that dairy manure may be used as a natural fertilizer for a crop farmer’s soil, and in turn the beet pulp byproduct from sugar making goes back to feed dairy cows. And then dairy farming and cheesemaking provide jobs for hundreds of people living in Cache Valley. The longstanding dairy heritage is further celebrated by the newly launched Cache Valley Cheese & Dairy Festival, an annual event which kicked off in September 2021. 

Edwin Gossner: A Cheesemaking Visionary

The youngest son of nine children, Edwin Othmar Gossner was born in 1908 in Eastern Switzerland, where his family had been farming near Waldkirch for generations. Knowing that his older brother would inherit the family farm, Gossner applied for a U.S. visa in 1930 and traveled by boat to New York with the intention to join his brother Ernest, who was managing a cheese plant in Wisconsin. With only the clothes on his back and speaking no English, Ed Gossner used all the money he had left to buy a train ticket to Wisconsin and two apples, his only sustenance for the rest of the journey. 

Ernest taught his brother how to make cheese using recipes and techniques handed down from Swiss cheesemakers, and eventually Ed became a master cheesemaker himself. He met and married Josephine Oechslin, and managed cheesemaking plants in Wisconsin and California. 

During a family trip to Yellowstone National Park, Gossner visited Utah’s Cache Valley, a region known as “The Little Switzerland of the Rockies,” and he was immediately struck by the similarities to his homeland. In 1941, the Cache Valley Dairy Association hired Gossner to convert a failed beet sugar plant they’d purchased in the small town of Amalga into an operational cheese plant. 

This collaboration resulted in Gossner making the first Swiss cheese in Utah in January of 1942, which he continued to do as the plant’s manager for the next 24 years. By the 1960s, this plant was the largest Swiss cheese factory in the world, contracting with 800 local dairy farmers and grossing over $10 million in annual sales. 

In 1965, Gossner left the Cache Valley Dairy Association plant to launch Gossner Foods, finally achieving his dream of owning his own cheese company, with several family members in leadership positions. His daughter Dolores Wheeler took over as CEO in 1984. The company’s current CEO, Kristan Earl — Gossner’s great-granddaughter — explains that growing up in the family business was very hands-on: she worked on the family farm, helped in the retail outlet and eventually assisted her grandmother, Dolores Wheeler, in management, all while she was earning an agribusiness degree from Utah State University. 

She was hired fulltime as a milk procurement specialist the same month she graduated. That job helped her understand how milk was priced, and how vital the success of local dairies were to her family’s company.

Now, Gossner Foods co-packs cheese with labels of some of the biggest dairy brands in the nation. Earl reiterates that no matter how large the operation is, cheesemaking is dependent upon sourcing quality raw ingredients. “Our farm families are the first step to producing quality milk, from which we craft quality cheese,” she says.

She’s inspired by her own family’s history, how her great-grandfather fell in love with the beauty of Cache Valley, while he also saw a business opportunity, based on paying better prices to local dairies. The company her ancestor founded still works with Pappys Farm, as well as some of the area’s other fourth- and fifth-generation family farms. “This contributes to the success of the rural lifestyle we enjoy,” Earl says. 

It also happens to be really, really delicious.