The All-American Turkey Show: When Grand Forks, North Dakota, Was the Turkey Capital of the World, 1924-1942

The All-American Turkey show, which met in Grand Forks, North Dakota, from 1924 to 1942, brought people from across the contiguous US to the northern plains to exhibit their prize turkeys. The show served multiple purposes, including encouraging farmers to diversify production and increase their incomes by raising turkeys. Mostly farmwives took up the call, managing the farm’s turkey flock; two-thirds of the turkeys exhibited at the shows were raised and exhibited by women. They also attended the Education Sessions at the shows, where they learned how to care for their flocks and to select breeding stock in order to bring their turkeys as close as was humanly possible to the exacting standards adhered to by the show’s judges.

Another purpose of the shows was to encourage consumers to eat more turkey and to eat it throughout the year, not just during the holiday season. In part, to fulfill this purpose, the shows introduced competition in dressed turkeys and boxed and canned turkeys.

Finally, the shows were intended to be truly “All-American” by providing an opportunity for “turkey folk” to gather for a week each year to compete for more awards than were offered at any other poultry show, renew acquaintances, make new friends, and enjoy each other’s company. That the shows succeeded handsomely in this purpose was evidenced by exhibitors from eighteen turkey-producing states and five Canadian provinces.

The All-American Turkey Show was done in by its success. By the eve of World War II, its purposes had been fulfilled and the shows were being held for little reason other than that there seemed to be no graceful way to discontinue them. It was the war, with its shortages of labor, gasoline, and rubber, that brought the All-American Turkey Shows to a merciful end. Shows were suspended for the duration of the war on the assumption they would begin again at war’s end. They did not, and the All-American Turkey Shows passed into history.

 

ISBN: 978-1-946163-67-7
Page Count: 452
Picture Count: 12-page color photo gallery, 37 black and white images
Index: Yes
Bibiliography: Yes
Paperback
Publication Date: April 13, 2024

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Sparked by his unique sense of historical curiosity, which led him to pursue the source of the Great Northern Railway silk trains and the origin of the quartzite monuments marking the border between the Dakotas, historian Gordon L. Iseminger takes the reader of The All-American Turkey Show on a journey through the surprisingly fascinating world of competitive turkey exhibition in the northern Great Plains. Emboldened by the rich historical—and literary—heritage of turkeydom, Iseminger traces the introduction of the turkey to Europe, via the Spanish (in a kind of turkeys-for-horses exchange), its centuries-long popularity in the Old World, its reintroduction (as a domesticated bird) to America, and the growth and development of the turkey industry in the years before the Second World War. With wit and humor, Iseminger entertains and teaches us about the creature that Ben Franklin preferred to appear on the Great Seal of the United States as “a more respectable Bird” than the eagle.
—Harry Thompson, Executive Director, Center for Western Studies, Augustana University

 

The professor has a keen eye on life as it goes by. His description of the turkey days that used to be is delightful.
—Marilyn Hagerty, Columnist and former Features Editor for the Grand Forks Herald

 

Dr. Iseminger has a knack of finding the lesser-known moments in our past and delving deep into their history. The All-American Turkey Show is one of those long-forgotten events in Grand Forks’s past revived in his writings.
—Marsha Gunderson, Former Chairperson, Grand Forks Historic Preservation Commission

 

ISBN: 978-1-946163-67-7
Page Count: 452
Picture Count: 12-page color photo gallery, 37 black and white images
Index: Yes
Bibiliography: Yes
Paperback
Publication Date: April 13, 2024

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