Turkey Rama and the Turkey Capital
Near Mcminnville, Oregon
For much of the twentieth century, McMinnville was turkey country. Yamhill County's flat valley farms proved ideal for raising turkeys, and by the nineteen eighties the county produced more than ninety percent of all the turkeys grown in Oregon. The town celebrated its signature bird with a festival.
The first Pacific Coast Turkey Exhibit was held here in nineteen thirty eight, a single day of contests and prizes, and by the late nineteen forties it had grown into one of the largest industry celebrations in the entire country. In nineteen sixty one the event took the name it still carries, Turkey Rama. Held downtown each summer, Turkey Rama became famous for its enormous turkey barbecue.
In its biggest years, cooks grilled more than eleven thousand pounds of turkey over open pits, and promoters happily billed it as the world's largest turkey barbecue. The industry that inspired it faded by the nineteen nineties, undone by competition from giant breeders in California and the Midwest and by a damaging recall at the valley's main processing plant. But the festival outlived the business, and the smell of barbecued turkey drifting down Third Street each summer still recalls the days when this was one of America's great turkey towns.
