Oakland: Turkey Capital of the World

Oakland, in Douglas County, wears a distinction that surprises most people passing through: for a time in the early twentieth century it was known as the Turkey Capital of the World. Turkey raising was a major local industry, and the town is said to have hosted a large regional turkey show in the early nineteen thirties.

The town itself incorporated in eighteen seventy-eight and has one of the best-preserved Victorian commercial districts in Oregon, a two-block stretch of brick buildings from the eighteen eighties and nineties that became the first city placed on Oregon's historic register in nineteen sixty-eight. Today it sits quietly off Interstate Five in the Umpqua Valley wine country, a small town that once ruled the roost.