The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
‘Home of Sliced Bread’: Missouri town champions its greatest thing
U.S. Route 36 stretches for 200 miles across the flat farmland of northern Missouri, connecting Kansas to Illinois. At one end is the Pony Express Bridge in St. Joseph and at the other is the Mark Twain Memorial Bridge in Hannibal.
The route is called “The Way of American Genius” because some of the nation’s best-known innovators, creative minds and a military hero spent parts of their childhood near towns along the route, including Samuel Clemens, a.k.a Mark Twain (Hannibal), Walt Disney (Marceline), Gen. John J. Pershing (Laclede) and James Cash “J. C.” Penney (Hamilton).
For ages, Chillicothe, a town of 9, 500 along the route, felt left out. As far as anyone knew, nothing had been invented there of equal stature.
Then, in 2001, a local journalist, combing through microfilm of old newspapers, stumbled upon a slice of American innovation long overlooked by local residents and state historians. The headline on an old news clipping said: “SLICED BREAD IS MADE HERE.”
It appeared on the front page of the Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune on July 6, 1928, the day before the first machine-sliced bread would be sold to customers. “The Chillicothe Baking Company,” it said, “has installed a power driven multi-bladed bread slicer which performs a feat which heretofore had been considered by bakers as being impossible — namely, the slicing of loaves.”
That bakery, run by Marion “Frank” Bench, was the first in the nation to sell commercially sliced and wrapped bread. Other bakers said it couldn’t be done without the loaves losing their freshness. The bread was first sold the same year that Disney created Mickey Mouse, just months before the Great Depression.
A Chillicothe newspaper ad promoted the breakthrough as “the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped.” Soon others were using the phrase “the greatest thing since sliced bread” to hype inventions that followed and, for that matter, a lot of other things. President Barack Obama invoked the saying after the Chicago Cubs won the World Series in 2016, their first title in 108 years.
“No one says, ‘It’s the greatest thing since the cellphone,’” said Ed Douglas, president of Chillicothe’s Slice Bread Corp., because the automated bread slicer is “the American innovation by which others are measured.”
Now Chillicothe is hoping for additional recognition. A bill moving through the Missouri House calls for designating July 7 as “Missouri Sliced Bread Day.” If passed, the measure will go to the state Senate for consideration. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s editorial board called it the legislature’s “weirdest bill.”
After Chillicothe rediscovered its sliced bread history, it learned that Battle Creek, Michigan, was also claiming to be the first site where the commercial sliced bread was sold. But Chillicothe had the documentation. In 2003, Richard Rohwedder, the son of the inventor, visited Chillicothe and confirmed that it was the first site. The only other time he had been in town was July 7, 1928, when, “at the age of 13, he held the first loaf of bread to go through his father’s slicing machine,” the Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune reported.
Chillicothe had other records to prove its claim. “We had newspaper articles — a record of history,” said Catherine Stortz Ripley, the Constitution-Tribune’s editor and the journalist who rediscovered the town’s bread history. Additional documentation was found in Otto Rohwedder’s scrapbook, which his son shared during his visit.
“It had an order list of what bakeries wanted the bread slicing machine — probably over 100,” Ripley said. “It showed Chillicothe was the first one. He had notations of when the machines would be delivered.”
The National Museum of American History also says Chillicothe was where the “first commercial bread slicing was used.” Although the initial machine didn’t survive, Rohwedder’s second machine was donated to the Smithsonian by his relatives and is on loan to the Grand River Historical Society Museum in Chillicothe.
In 2003, the town adopted “Home of Sliced Bread” as its official slogan. It hosts events such as the “Sliced Jam Bluegrass Festival” and, of course, bread baking contests. Plans are in the works to turn the bakery’s original building on the corner of First and Elm streets into a visitors center highlighting the town’s claim to fame.
The national attention that sliced bread has brought the town — including appearing as a clue on “Jeopardy!” - has been helpful to the struggling rural economy because of the tourism it brings. Now, residents are hoping the legislature will also give them a boost by adopting a Missouri Sliced Bread Day.
“We’re a viable part of the country as well,” said state Rep. Rusty Black, R, of Chillicothe, who proposed the bill. “Instead of making fun of a small town, they’re looking at Chillicothe as something where innovation is based.”
In other words, a place of “genius.”