Monterey Jack: An Original American Cheese with a Very Curious History
Editor’s note: This story is an expanded version of the authors vignette "Monterey Jack: Cheese Creation Myths" published in Secret Monterey: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful and Obscure by Reedy Press in 2022.
Schoch Jack photo credit Schoch Family Farmstead
An annual listing of the Best U.S. Cities for Cheese Lovers released on National Cheese Lover’s Day 2023 ranked Salinas, California, dead last with zero points. It notes, “ironically, this city is located in Monterey County, where Monterey Jack traces its origins.” But with a methodology that includes the number of Cheesecake Factory restaurants per square mile, this result has to be treated with some disdain.
It did, however, intrigue me enough to research the origins of the eponymous cheese. A few hours digging into the files of the California History Room in the Monterey Public Library revealed this as a topic of perennial local interest. That interest is piqued by the number of competing stories, personalities, and nationalities that vie for a slice of the Jack cheese legacy. Or should it be jack cheese?
The Simple Origin Story
In the late 1700s, Franciscan padres at Mission San Carlos near Carmel on California’s Monterey Peninsula created a semi-firm cow’s milk cheese with a creamy, mild flavor and high moisture content that became a staple of the local farming community. Scottish immigrant David Jacks arrived in Monterey during the early days of the Gold Rush and amassed an empire of dairies. When the railroad arrived, he started exporting cheese to San Francisco and beyond. Labeled “Jacks Monterey Cheese,” it soon became known as Monterey Jack.
The More Complicated Origin Story
The Boronda dairy adobe before restoration. Photo: Mayo Hayes O'Donnell Library
Jose Manuel Boronda raised cattle on Rancho Los Laureles near today’s Carmel Valley Village. After an accident left him unable to work, his wife started selling a queso del pais (country-style cheese) to raise money to feed the family. Following a process she learned from family members in Aragon, Spain, Doña Boronda placed the curds in a sack and wrung it to squeeze out the liquid. A weighted plank atop the sack flattened the cheese into a wheel of the desired thickness.
The family claimed that David Jacks purchased cheese from the Borondas, copied the recipe, and sold it under his name. As Jacks was widely reviled in the region for his cutthroat business practices, this version enjoys a broad following.
A Different Origin Story
Hotel del Monte from Beauties of California (1883)
Railroad baron Charles Crocker built the Hotel Del Monte in Monterey as a playground for the rich and famous in 1880. His Pacific Improvement Company acquired the Boronda Adobe property to supply butter and cheese to hotel guests. Instead of using a weighted plank to flatten the cheese, the dairy manager squeezed it with a jack – a device used to support sagging house beams.
After the Pebble Beach Company purchased the hotel in 1915, the founder S. F. B. Morse, offered another twist. He claimed that Domingo Pedrazzi, a Swiss Italian dairyman, developed a Jack variety sold as Del Monte Cheese that also used the house jack press. So now we have two origin stories of jack cheese spelled with a lowercase “j”.
The Portuguese Origin Stories
Jack cheese press at Point Lobos photo credit David Laws
From the 1860s through the ‘80s, Portuguese whalers harpooned whales, hauled them to shore, and processed oil at what is today Point Lobos State Natural Reserve. Many lived on small family farms scattered along the rugged Big Sur coast. Manuel Jose Rodrigues and his wife Maria, who learned to make cheese from her mother in the Azores islands, raised dairy cows near Palo Colorado Canyon. Descendants of the family claim that David Jacks acted as Maria’s agent to sell her cheese as Monterey Jack in San Francisco.
Another Azorean family, the Vierra’s, made cheese at Point Lobos. Mrs. Vierra gave her cheese recipe to her neighbor Mrs. Victorine. The Victorines opened a dairy in Watsonville that failed. One of their employees then moved on to work for David Jacks, taking the recipe with him. A jack press used at the Point Lobos Dairy in the early 1900s is displayed in the Whaler’s Cabin Museum on the Reserve.
Enter the Italians
Italian immigrant, Stefano Mori, arrived in San Francisco in 1888 and opened an inn that enjoyed a notorious reputation during Prohibition. His restaurant was also noted for a cheese made following a recipe from his homeland. The Pacifica Historical Society claims that a family friend stole Mori’s recipe and went to work for David Jacks, and raised funds by selling “Pacifica Jack, California’s original jack cheese.”
Monterey Jack Today
Kent Torrey serves Schoch Jack photo credit David Laws
At the beginning of the 20th century, hundreds of Monterey County dairies made Jack cheese. Even as it became one of the nation’s most popular varieties, diary land became more valuable for crop production, and farmers switched to growing strawberries and produce. Today seventy percent of the nation’s lettuce is grown in the Salinas Valley, but 99% of Jack is made in giant factories far away.
Just one dairy in the county, the Schoch Family Farmstead of Salinas established in 1944, produces Monterey Jack commercially. Schoch makes several styles of cheese, but its artisan Jack is a favorite at The Cheese Shop in Carmel-by-the-Sea, where president and CEO (Cheese Eating Oenophile) Kent Torrey regales customers with his preferred origin story – he backs the hapless Doña Boronda. The Schoch’s cheese is made by hand and unlike most commercial jack, has a rind and like the origin story of jack cheese, is far from bland.