Pumpkin Center is located in Grant Township,

Dallas County Dallas County may refer to: Places in the USA: * Dallas County, Alabama, founded in 1818, the first county in the United States by that name * Dallas County, Arkansas * Dallas County, Iowa * Dallas County, Missouri * Dallas County, Texas, the nin ...

Missouri Missouri is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee ...

. It is in the

Missouri Ozarks Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas to th ...

at an elevation of 1,130 feet, near the intersection of

Missouri Route 64 Route 64 is a highway in central Missouri with endpoints of Route 254 south of Hermitage and Route 5 in Lebanon. Route 64 is one of the original 1922 state highways and originally ran between Preston and Collins. It would eventually be moved ...

and

Missouri Route 73 Missouri Route 73 is a short state highway in southwest Missouri. It runs from an intersection with U.S. Route 65 in the northern part of Buffalo in Dallas County to U.S. Route 54 near Macks Creek in Camden County. The route is two lanes for i ...

off Pumpkin Center Drive. It is approximately 7 miles north-northeast of Buffalo, the Dallas County seat, and about 26 miles west-northwest of

Lebanon Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to the north and east and Israel to the south, while Cyprus li ...

. This is not to be confused with the Pumpkin Center located in White Cloud Township, Nodaway County, Missouri, which is approximately 10 miles south of the

Nodaway County Nodaway County is a county located in the northwest part of Missouri. As of the 2010 census, the population was 23,370. Its county seat is Maryville. The county was organized February 14, 1845 and is named for the Nodaway River. It is the larg ...

seat of Maryville on

US Route 71 U.S. Route 71 or U.S. Highway 71 (US 71) is a major north–south United States highway that extends for over 1500 miles (2500 km) in the central United States. This original 1926 route has remained largely unchanged by encroaching Intersta ...

. No information appears on the origins of the name; however, "Pumpkin Center" as a town name was widely publicized by one

Cal Stewart Cal Stewart (b. 1856 Charlotte County, Virginia, d. December 7, 1919) was an American comedian and humorist who pioneered in vaudeville and early sound recordings. He is best remembered for his comic monologues in which he played "Uncle Josh ...

, who was a popular spoken-word recording artist in the late 1890s and early 1900s. He frequently played the character of a gullible individual by the name of Uncle Josh Weathersby who hailed from the fictional town of "Pumpkin Center" or "Punkin Center". The recordings described life in Pumpkin Center, as well as the character’s collisions with modernity in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. Perhaps as a result, there are at least 31 communities in the U.S. named Pumpkin Center scattered across 16 states, including Alabama (3), Arizona (2), California (2), Florida, Georgia, Indiana (2), Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri (2), Mississippi, North Carolina (3), Oklahoma (4), South Dakota, Tennessee (3) and Virginia (2).

References

Unincorporated communities in Dallas County, Missouri Unincorporated communities in Missouri {{DallasCountyMO-geo-stub