Thanksgiving Maps and Geography

Want to know where your Thanksgiving food comes from?  Linda Zellmer, Government Information & Data Services Librarian at Western Illinois University, has created a series of choropleth maps showing production by state of common food items found on the table at Thanksgiving for the years 1997, 2002, and 2007.  Produce (such a sweet potato, green bean, and cranberry production) is mapped by number of acres harvested and turkeys are symbolized by number of turkeys per state.  Zellmer brings all the items together in her posters entitled “Where Does Thanksgiving Dinner Grow?”

Also available are the datasets for 2002 and 2007 in DBF, CSV or Excel format.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Visit: Thanksgiving Maps & Posters

Where Does Thanksgiving Dinner Come From?

Back in 2009, the NY Times mapped out Thanksgiving related search terms to see what people were thinking of preparing for their Thanksgiving meals across the country.  The analysis looked at the top search terms on allrecipes.com and the nytimes.com.  The top search term?  Recipes for sweet potato pie.

Visit: What’s Cooking on Thanksgiving

Geography of Thanksgiving

Some Thanksgiving geography related facts from the U.S. Census Bureau:

There are four places in the United States with “Turkey” in their name.  Turkey Creek in Louisiana had the most residents with 444.  In descending order, the remaining three locations with (population): Turkey, Texas (421), Turkey Creek, Ariz. (294), and Turkey, N.C. (292) .  There are eleven townships containing the name “Turkey”.  There are nine places and townships with “Cranberry” (or a close variation) in the name.

Minnesota was the leader in raising live turkeys with 46.5 million birds (out of 248 million for the entire United States).  99.7% of imported live turkeys are from Canada.  Wisconsin produced the most green beans (258,320 tons) of all the states.  Wisconsin was also the highest producer of cranberries (430 million pounds).  Illinois was the leader in producing pumpkins (427 million pounds).  Sweet potatoes were produced in the highest amount in North Carolina (972 million pounds).

Originally posted on November 23, 2006 and updated November 21, 2011

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