On Thursday, as families and friends come together around a feast, millions of these households will have a turkey as their centerpiece. 

In many ways, Thanksgiving has become synonymous with turkeys. And so, in honor of the gobbling bird, here’s a look at the history, biology and survival of turkeys in Colorado and across the United States. 

A turkey’s place on Thanksgiving 

Much like turkey’s place in holiday meals, Thanksgiving itself has several origins throughout American history. 

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The story of the “first” Thanksgiving is often linked to a 1621 fall harvest festival between the Wampanoag people and English colonizers. Historians say it’s unlikely that turkey was part of this harvest. It’s more likely that the main meat would have been geese, ducks or deer. 

The turkey’s place at Thanksgiving, much like the story that this harvest was the first celebration of the holiday, came centuries later. 

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President Abraham Lincoln established Thanksgiving as a national holiday in 1863. The holiday was created as a way to unify the country during the Civil War but had been irregularly celebrated previously in different states. 

New England Magazine Editor Sarah Josepha Hale is heavily credited for the proclamation as she spent decades lobbying the federal government to acknowledge the national holiday. 

From Hale and her persistence came not only Thanksgiving but also the turkey’s place on the dinner table, many believe. Hale — who wrote about topics like literature, cooking and fashion — described a New England Thanksgiving in her 1827 novel “Northwood,” placing a roasted turkey in a prominent position in the traditional meal. 

While this is one of the more common stories, others credit the turkey’s rise in popularity to its practicality. In the 1800s, turkeys were not only plentiful on the continent but were a large enough bird to feed the entire family. Others say that a depiction of turkey in Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol,” written in 1843, led to its rise in prominence on holiday tables. 

The national importance of turkey is often linked to a now disproven fable that Benjamin Franklin wanted it to be the national bird over the bald eagle. He was seemingly fond of the animal, however. In a letter to his daughter, Franklin did call the turkey a “much more respectable bird,” writing that although they were “a little vain and silly” they were a “bird of courage,” according to The Franklin Institute.

Regardless of the inception, turkeys are now sold in the millions each Thanksgiving, with both domestic and wild turkeys sitting central to the tradition. 

The National Wild Turkey Federation wrote in a blog that turkeys were likely one of the first animals to be domesticated and raised for food in the Americas, with the Mayans domesticating turkeys in Mexico nearly 2,000 years ago. Today, domestic and wild turkeys have several differences, most obviously that domestic turkeys have white feathers compared to the brown of their wild counterparts. Most of the differences — including that domestic turkeys are bigger, fatter and can’t fly — have to do with the way they’ve been bred for consumption. 

Turkeys in Colorado 

Wild turkeys have lived many lives since the inception of the first Thanksgiving celebrations — going from near extinction in the 1900s to being revived to now abundant populations, a story that makes turkeys “one of the largest success stories in wildlife management,” according to Ed Gorman, a small game manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

“There were lots and lots of them during pre-settlement, and as settlement began and continued, turkey populations really took a beating because they were a food source,” Gorman said. 

During the Great Depression, it was estimated that there were only 30,000 turkeys in North America. Nearing extinction, nationwide efforts to restore the birds began in the mid- to late-1900s.

Colorado began its own aggressive reintroduction efforts in the 1980s, not only supplementing the Merriam’s turkey populations that were native to the state but also introducing Rio Grande turkeys along the Eastern plains.