Dairy country and the Creamery in Tillamook
Dairy has shaped Tillamook for well over a century. Wikipedia says dairy farming is one of the largest agricultural occupations in Tillamook County, and that the surrounding farmland supplies the Tillamook County Creamery Association. The county is wet: Wikipedia gives Tillamook an average of about 90 inches of precipitation a year, compared with about 36 in Portland.
A farmer-owned cooperative
The Tillamook County Creamery Association says on its own site that it has been farmer-owned since 1909. Wikipedia describes it as a cooperative formed in 1909 by local dairy farms, with a central cheese factory built north of town in 1949. The factory is a visitor attraction, and the association runs a visitor center there. See the official site for its story and visiting details.
The county
Tillamook County was created in 1853, with Tillamook as the county seat. Between 1933 and 1951 a series of forest fires in the Coast Range, known as the Tillamook Burn, covered about 355,000 acres. Voters approved bonds in 1948 to buy and replant the burned land, and it became the Tillamook State Forest.