Little Switzerland Grows Up

Wyoming's 100-mile-long Star Valley, near the Idaho border, is known to its 3,000 inhabitants as "America's Little Switzerland." Star Valley looks the part. Perched 6,000 feet high near the snowcapped peaks of the Tetons, its lush green meadows are dotted with cows in the summer, blanketed with snow all winter. Star Valley is like Switzerland in another way. From it each year come thousands of pounds of Swiss cheese which Star Valleyites think, with some reason, is the best made in the U.S.

The biggest cheese maker in Star Valley is a Swiss immigrant named Ernest Brog, who went to Wyoming in 1923. Brog taught valley farmers how to improve their herds and boost milk production, often bought equipment for them out of his own pocket, joined the Mormon Church to which most of them belong.

At Brog's 30-man factory in Thayne, Wyo., the work is exacting, and much of it is done by hand. As each vat of milk coagulates, trained men stir the curds with harplike tools and with a special rhythmic motion that is said to contribute to the cheese's flavor. At precisely the right moment, the cheese is pressed into 200-lb. wheels about ten inches thick and 30 inches in diameter. The wheels are placed on racks for six months of curing and aging, are rotated, washed and salted at proper intervals during this period. Not till the salt has permeated the whole wheel is the flavor right. Last week Brog's men figured the flavor was perfect in 1,200 Ibs. of cheese, and shipped off the first big batch for the Christmas trade.

With Americans eating more cheese than ever before (7 1/2 Ibs. per capita this year v. 6 Ibs. before the war), Brog expects his 1951 sales to top IQSO'S mark of $800,000. The secret of Star Valley's success, Brog thinks, is its altitude and climate, which somehow add to the protein content of the grass in the meadows.

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