Known as the “Gateway to Mount St. Helens,” the South Lewis County city of Toledo is famous for not only having the shortest and most scenic route to the volcano, but also for its Cheese Days Festival as the town used to be home to several cheese factories.
However, the last time any cheese was actually produced in Toledo was 1945. Local cheese lovers were left with only the cheese section at the Toledo Market Fresh grocery store to satisfy their cravings.
The South Lewis County community’s love for cheese never faltered as it continues to hold its annual Cheese Days Festival, with the 104th annual extravaganza scheduled to start Thursday, July 11, and run through July 14.
That love for cheese was infectious, too, as Kyle and Matt Wheeler found out when they moved to Toledo in 2016.
The Chronicle visited the Wheelers’ Toledo Cheese Depot on Friday, May 23, to learn more about the business.
“Matt and I, I’ve joked with him for a long time that, ‘Hey, Toledo needs a cheese shop,’” Kyle said. “There’s a level of, ‘Where did the cheese go?’ And then, in 2023, the theme for Cheese Days was ‘Where is the cheese?’ I was just like, ‘Matt, I’ve joked about this enough at this point that we really need to try.’”
For Matt, it was an idea that was fun to think about. They wondered why nobody was capitalizing on selling cheese in a town famous for cheese, but when they first moved to Toledo, neither of them really had the time.
“Kyle had kind of moved off the nonprofit work he had been doing and was kind of ready to take on a new adventure,” Matt said. “And this space became available, and so we decided to go ahead and give it a whirl.”
This past March, they opened the Toledo Cheese Depot, bringing a wide variety of artisan cheeses and gourmet finger foods back to the heart of downtown Toledo.
Aside from soft and hard cheeses and cheeses for those with dairy allergies or on a vegan diet, the Toledo Cheese Depot also offers nuts, crackers, salami, mustard, pickled products, jam, honey and more, along with picnic sets and silverware from cheese makers and suppliers both regionally and internationally.
“I’ve got everything from France all the way in, and then I’ve got local guys as well. My closest is Sunrise Creamery up in Chehalis,” Kyle said. “... Everything from hyperlocal to all the way to halfway across the world. Right when I first opened up, I had a lady who called and said, ‘I grew up in Greece and I haven’t been home in a long time, can you find me some Halloumi?’”
Originating from the Island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea, Halloumi cheese is made from a blend of cow, sheep and goat milk.
“It holds together great. They fry it. It’s a grillable cheese. They put it on a grill. You can actually get grill marks in it,” Kyle said. “It holds its texture. You can go over to Greece and they put it on skewers and just fry them on a grill. You say grilled cheese and people think of a grilled cheese sandwich. No, this is actual grilled cheese.”
The Toledo Cheese Depot’s location is historical as well, as it just happens to be in a building more than a century old that was originally Toledo’s old variety mercantile store.
“This was built before the city was (incorporated), so they don’t have a lot of records for it,” Kyle said.
Now, more than a century after Toledo residents were first purchasing cheese and pickles from the mercantile store, they can do so again.
Kyle added he also gets many longtime local residents coming in and fondly remembering when the building used to be a Shake Shack in the 1970s.
“From there, it became Joan’s hair place, and Joan Norberg ran a hair studio here for close to 30 years,” he said.
After Norberg retired and the Toledo Hair Studio closed, the building’s owner remodeled the inside, and now it’s the home of the Toledo Cheese Depot.
The location also happens to be near the locations of where Toledo’s old cheese factories used to be open, including both the Cowlitz Valley Cheese Association and Karlen Creameries, Inc.
And being located in the heart of downtown Toledo, the Toledo Cheese Depot is an unofficial visitor’s center, and Kyle and Matt want to help promote tourism in town.
Kyle is currently putting together a new visitor’s pamphlet complete with a guide to all the murals around Toledo along with guide information to historical locations.
Following a mudslide in May 2023 that destroyed part of state Route 504 — the Spirit Lake Memorial Highway — leading up to Mount St. Helens, he wants to show there is still a lot to do even without access to the Johnston Ridge Observatory.
The section of highway beyond the mudslide leading to the observatory remains closed off as highway repairs aren’t expected to be completed until next year — though the Science and Learning Center at Coldwater Lake on Spirit Lake Memorial Highway is still open.
“There’s been a lot of fear of losing a lot of the mountain traffic because of the highway being shut down. But I think a lot of folks are missing the fact that there’s still a lot of really great tourist things up there up to the point of the closure,” Kyle said. “You’ve still got a lot of really great hiking trails, a lot of really cool things.”
He hopes having artisan cheese also helps draw in more visitors to help fuel the local economy, and perhaps even inspire someone to once again begin producing cheese in Toledo.
But for now, being able to purchase imported Old Irish Creamery Irish porter cheddar — a cheddar cheese made in Effin, Ireland, and marbled with porter brewed by the Guinness Brewery — among many other delicious cheeses in Toledo, will suffice.
The Toledo Cheese Depot is also participating in the upcoming 104th annual Cheese Days Festival, partnering with Bateaux Cellars Winery to host the Cheese Days Social Makers Market and Picnic on Saturday, July 13, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 288 Smokey Valley Road in Toledo.
It will feature a picnic and a market with Lewis County artisans and producers along with cheese rolling and cheese chuck games — with prizes for the winners.
The Toledo Cheese Depot is located at 209 Cowlitz St. in downtown Toledo. It is open Wednesday through Saturday from noon to 6 p.m.
For more information, follow the Toledo Cheese Depot on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/toledocheesedepot.
