The legendary cheese that put Colby on the map
A discussion of Colby’s history would be remiss without mention of the cheese that bears the same name as the city. Invented in an area cheese factory in the 1880’s, Colby cheese has become a symbol of the city as its popularity and acclaim grew over the decades that followed, it served as a mark of the ingenuity and dairy farming roots of the community where it was first created.
The origins of Colby cheese were partially a product of the changing landscapes in central Wisconsin the late 1800s, both figuratively and literally. As the lumber yards worked through more and more of the area’s natural forests, leaving behind now empty fields, the local industry shifted from logging to dairy farming. As such, central Wisconsin was rife with opportunities for growth in the production of cheese, butter and other dairy products.
Ambrose and Susan Steinwand were part of this shift, opening a small cheese factory near the village of Colby in 1882. The pair ran the factory with their family, producing 125 pounds of cheese per day starting in early spring and ending in late fall.
In 1885, while working at the family factory, the Steinwand’s son Joseph created a cheese that would one day be known across the world as Colby. He followed a similar process to that of the creation of cheddar cheese, which was the primary cheese the Steinwands were making at the time, but after separating the curds from the whey, Steinwand washed them in cold water. This slowed down the acidification process and allowed the cheese to collect extra moisture. He also decided to age it for a much shorter time than that typically needed for cheddar, somewhere between three weeks to three months. By changing the process in this fashion, Steinwand was able to create a cheese that was milder, softer and more moist than the cheddar cheese it was based off.
The Steinwands began to sell the new cheese, naming it after the town it was made in and it quickly began to grow in popularity. According to an excerpt from the
some local store owners even used it as a marketing tactic, with one Phillips’ merchant having been quoted as saying that “one of the 13 reasons why people should trade with him, that he sells the genuine Steinwand Colby Cheese.”
As the dairy industry continued to expand, so too did the production of Colby and it began to propagate beyond just central Wisconsin. Its popularity would continue to grow, eventually reaching national and global acclaim and production. A combination of Colby and Monterey Jack would lead to the marbled hybrid Colby-Jack, which also grew to similar popularity.
And while the cheese garnered world-wide renown, it continued to be produced and celebrated in the town where it originated. Cheese factories in the area continued to produce the cheese and a more modern factory was built and operated by Lawrence Hoernke and his family in 1965 in the same location as the original Steinwand factory. The factory made nearly 4,000 pounds of Colby per day, 32 times the amount of the Steinwand factory and continued to do so until it closed in 1983.
The annual Colby Cheese Days event, which began in 1965, celebrates the city’s connection to the surrounding dairy farms, and more specifically, the cheese invented mere miles away from the festivities and continues to this very day.
More recently, there have been pushes to have Colby cheese named as Wisconsin’s state cheese. In 1997, a bill was introduced in the State Assembly to have the cheese officially recognized in the Wisconsin Blue Book as the state cheese. It was a motion that passed by a large margin, 8115, in 1998, but the Senate never voted on the bill. Several more attempts saw Colby residents lobbying for the cheese to be recognized as such in 2019 and 2021, but the efforts have thus far not gone through, with those opposed citing that they are afraid that such a designation could hurt the sales of other Wisconsin-made cheeses.
What lies next for both the cheese and the city it was named after remains to be seen, but just as the circumstances of their origins were intertwined, so too does it seem likely that their futures will be so. Just as the shift from logging to dairy created the conditions for the invention of Colby cheese, the evolution of the agricultural industry will continue to impact both the cheese and the residents of the area where it was born.
