On Thanksgivings past, Wichita flocked to this North Hillside turkey farm
Today, Wichitans typically buy their Thanksgiving turkeys at the supermarket.
But in the 1950s and 1960s, thousands of locals would drive out to a turkey farm on North Hillside, commune with the farm’s gobbling waddlers, then pick out the bird they wanted to invite over for Thanksgiving dinner.
Thompson Turkey Farm at 4260 N. Hillside is still remembered by many today, mainly because postcard collectors can still find cards that feature a picture of the farm taken by Azim Studios, likely between 1960 and 1965. The Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum used to share the postcard’s image — which showed a woman in a red coat surrounded by hundreds of white feathered, red-wattled turkeys — on its Facebook page every Thanksgiving.
Jesse and Edna Thompson bought their Wichita farm in 1909, shortly after they were married. In the early 1930s, Edna started raising turkeys as a hobby and would sell them for Christmas money. Then, in the mid 1940s, the Thompsons made turkeys the focus of their farm, where they also had cattle and hogs and grew farm grain and alfalfa. They bought a couple of thousand head of poults, added a brooder house to their property, and quickly found themselves running a family business that processed and sold thousands of birds a year.
With the help of their three sons, Kenneth, Keith and Dwight, the couple sold 14- to 30-pound broad-turkeys for decades. According to the back of the 1960s postcard, Thompson Turkey Farm raised and sold 9,000 to 12,000 turkeys each year.
“They are available fresh dressed during the holiday season and frozen the year around,” the back of the postcard reads. “Thompson specialize in supplying a high quality product, young, tender, delicious and completely oven ready.”
School children growing up in Wichita in the 1950s and 1960s almost certainly took at least one November field trip to the farm, and students enrolled in poultry production classes at Kansas State University would regularly visit as well.
Newspaper reporters also would faithfully venture to the farm each year for photos and to interview the Thompsons about pricing information and cooking tips. In November 1953, Keith Thompson appeared on the cover of the Wichita Eagle’s Sunday magazine, along with his son, Dan, age 4, and a large turkey. In 1951, The Wichita Eagle ran a startling-by-today’s-standards series of four photos on the front page of the Thanksgiving-eve paper. The photos showed 3-year-old Beth visiting the turkey farm, choosing and petting her turkey, then covering her eyes as the ax met her turkey’s neck.
“Being a big little girl, she knew that the turkey must die,” the caption read. “Half eager, half afraid, she peered between her tiny fingers at the fatal scene, which was necessary if she were to have turkey for Thanksgiving.”
The final two photos in the series showed a recovered Beth happily cooking then eating her turkey.
The Thompsons were deft marketers and often partnered with local businesses to give away turkeys with big purchases. In 1951, people who bought a 17-inch Philco television set at Paramount Appliances on East Douglas got a free Thompson turkey. In 1965, free turkeys were given to anyone who purchased a dining room suite or a hutch at Russel’s Northern Furniture Co.
Jesse Thompson died in 1961 followed by Edna in 1967. By then, sons Keith and Dwight were running the farm with the help of their wives and children, who all lived on the property. Thompson Turkey Farm stopped raising birds and closed in 1973. Becky Thompson, Keith’s wife and the farm’s faithful bookkeeper, told The Eagle that the decision to close was difficult but that feed prices had doubled since the previous year and the family could no longer find enough qualified, seasonal help. .
At the time of the closure, Thompson Turkey Farm was the only place left in Wichita that raised, processed and sold its own turkeys. Becky told the paper that the family would turn its focus to raising crops and cattle.
In 1982, the Thompson family sold the farm to Koch, whose headquarters — opened in 1968 — are nearby. Koch still owns the land.
This story was originally published November 26, 2025 at 1:18 PM.
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