The Pumpkin Capital Of The US Is Nestled Away In A Small Illinois Town

Every small town has its local claim to fame. Maybe it's a diner that's been there forever, or a town story that has survived generations. But the small village of Morton, Illinois, has a claim to fame that reaches a national level, yet most people outside of this approximately 17,000-person municipality wouldn't know it: It's the pumpkin capital of the United States.

Each fall, you see those distinct orange cans of pumpkin hit your local grocery store in waves. The baking aisle lights up with them; some are pure pumpkin while others are sweetened, spiced pumpkin pie filling. Take a closer look at the brand, and you'll notice it's almost always Libby's — the pumpkin company with headquarters in Morton. And, yes, this is the major reason why Morton produces an unbelievable number of pumpkins. 

Each year, mostly thanks to the Libby's plant, Illinois produces a whopping 485 million pounds of pumpkins, or more than one-third of the entire country's pumpkins. While the exact whole-pumpkin figures produced specifically by the Libby's plant are unknown, it has a major leg up in the canned pumpkin industry, with up to 95% of the country's canned pumpkin coming from the Libby's plant. It's one of the few brands of pumpkin puree you don't have to strain, so you get more pumpkin and less water than other cans, which is one possible reason why it's so frequently purchased.

Libby's didn't always make pumpkin pie filling. The original company was called Libby, McNeill & Libby, and it got its start in Chicago in the late 1800s as a canned meat company. But in the 1920s, with the rise of pumpkin pie as a Thanksgiving meal, Libby's purchased Dickinson & Co., an Illinois-based company known for its canned pumpkin.

The original Dickinson & Co. was started by Elijah Dickinson, who farmed his own breed of pumpkin, known as the Dickinson pumpkin. These pumpkins were beige and didn't have the usual indents that typical pumpkins have. They had a smooth surface and a sweet interior, the latter of which made them great for canned pumpkin.

After purchasing Dickinson & Co., Libby's decided to keep the pumpkin plant in Morton, where it already was. Eventually, the brand hired a recipe developer to create an easy pumpkin pie recipe that anyone can bake, meaning you don't have to worry about pesky pumpkin pie mistakes. It printed the recipe on its cans, and today, Libby's headquarters remains in Morton as a massive pumpkin-producing plant responsible for what's in most Americans' pumpkin pies.