Why the United States Has So Many ‘Jack’ Cheeses

British ex-pat Laurence Brown of Lost in the Pond, who was truly bewildered by the number of “Jack” cheeses in the United States, decided to look into it and offered a quick but fairly thorough explanation of the cheese’s namesake.

David Jacks was a Scottish businessman who moved to California during the Gold Rush in the 1880s. He sought to mass Market an existing dairy product that he named Jack’s cheese, only for this to be renamed Monterey Jack after the county in which he did business. In time other jacks were added and a family of them was born.