Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon
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  • About the Book
    • Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon
    • Reviews
  • About the Author
    • Cindy Ott
    • Publications
    • Acknowledgments
  • Online Exhibition
    • Just Another Squash: 12,000 BCE to 1600
    • From Pumpkin Beer to Pumpkin Pie: 1600 to 1799
    • The Making of a Rural New England Icon: 1800 to 1860
    • The Pumpkin and the Nation: 1861 to 1899
    • Americans Celebrate the Fall Harvest with Pumpkins: 1900 to 1945
    • The Changing Nature of Pumpkins: 1946 to the Present
    • The Changing Nature of American Rural Economies: 1946 to the Present
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The Changing Nature of Pumpkins

1946 to the Present

By the second half of the twentieth century, the ideal pumpkin was no longer one that would last through winter or nourish a cow but one that was "smooth and glossy orange-yellow in color with a round shape of good uniformity," as Burpee's 1975 seed catalog advertised. By 2007, 87 percent of pumpkins were not eaten but were put on display as Halloween and autumn decorations. The pumpkin's symbolism had become so much more important than its meat that many varieties, such as those sold by Burpee's, had become eye-cathcing wonders at the expense of fertility and palatability. Pumpkin foods did not even have to contain the vegetable; they could simply look like it. A rise in pumpkin sales matched the great changes in the vegetable's appearance.  The U.S. pumpkin harvest of 71,700 tons in 1949 more than doubled to 195,300 tons in 1959 and then leaped to 1.1 million tons in 2007.
Next: American Rural Economics

Changing Name and Face of Pumpkins

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Growers now breed pumpkins that weigh as much as 1 ton.  Specimens that are more than 20% gray, however, are considered squash, not pumpkins. Grey squashes are disqualified from competitions, even though they are botanically identical to the orange pumpkins. The pumpkin simply means more.

Ornamental Pumpkins

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A page from the Gurney’s Seed and Nursery Company, 1998 Spring Catalog, Yankton, S.D.  

Pumpkins Welcome Trick-or-Treaters 
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Spring Hope, N.C., October 2000. Photo: Cindy Ott.    

Atlantic Giants 

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Howard Dill, Inventer of the Atlantic Giant pumpkin, undated.  Photo: Don Langevin and GiantPumpkin.com 

Pumpkin Cookie Cutter
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“Pumpkin Spice Cookies,” cookie cutter & spices. Bark & Barkley, Inc., 1995.    
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