Who started National Hamburger Day?

May 28 sits at the end of National Hamburger Month, an observance Chase's Calendar of Events was carrying through the 1990s and 2000s, while holiday calendars were already listing the day itself in an archived capture from June 2013. No founder or establishing record for the day has been documented.

Who invented the hamburger?

No single inventor is established. Claims are recorded for towns in New York, Wisconsin, Texas, Oklahoma and Connecticut between 1885 and 1900, and two of them were named the Original Home of the Hamburger by a state legislature in May 2007.

Did the Library of Congress name Louis' Lunch the birthplace of the hamburger?

Not as a historical finding. The Library's Local Legacies page does call the New Haven shop the home of the first hamburger in U.S. history, but the entry was submitted by the district's member of Congress to a project the Library describes as a snapshot of American culture in spring 2000.

National Hamburger Day

Next celebratedFriday, May 28, 2027

Several American towns will tell you they invented the hamburger, and National Hamburger Day is happy to leave the argument unsettled. Cook one over real heat, and build it the way your house has always built it.

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEMay 28

OBSERVED INUnited States

CATEGORYFood

SUBCATEGORYBurgers

ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY

Not documented

FIRST OBSERVED

Not documented

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

One date for a sandwich with many hometowns.

No founder, sponsoring organisation or establishing record for National Hamburger Day has been documented. Chase's Calendar of Events carried National Hamburger Month in its editions from 1993 to 2007 and listed the day in none of them, while holiday calendars were already carrying it on May 28 in an archived listing from June 2013.

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INTRO

When statehouses got into the sandwich business

National Hamburger Day lands in a country that has never agreed on who made the first one. In May 2007 two state legislatures handed the same title to two different towns. Wisconsin declared Seymour the Original Home of the Hamburger, and Texas used the identical words for Athens.

Both were adopted. Wisconsin's Senate concurred in Assembly Joint Resolution 12 on 16 May, and House Concurrent Resolution 15 was signed by the Texas governor on 25 May. Neither text mentions the other.

Three more towns hold claims of their own. The Texas resolution opens by conceding that "accounts differ", then rests its case partly on "the staff at McDonald's management training center" and partly on an account it attributes to a nephew of Fletcher Davis.

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ORIGINS

Hamburger Day history

INTRODUCTION

Hamburg steak reached American newspapers before anyone claims to have made the sandwich. A Napa Register piece on tamales in 1883 explained a step by comparing it to chopping meat for Hamburg steak. The next year the Sonoma Democrat reprinted a Boston Herald item headed simply "Hamburg Steak."

The sandwich took another twenty years to reach print there. In California's digitised newspapers the phrase "hamburger sandwich" returns nothing at all before 1900. The earliest is a San Francisco Call courtroom story from 1904, in which James E. Watkins says: "Gimme a hamburger sandwich, an' make it rare."

CHAPTER 01

A steak, not a sandwich

Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book of 1896 carries a recipe for Hamburg Steaks. Its table of beef cuts files them under the neck and the lower part of the round, with the sirloin and tenderloin kept for steaks and roasts. One of its breakfast menus serves them beside creamed potatoes and white corn cake.

The word hamburger appears nowhere in that book. What a reader in 1896 made was a chopped beef cake, shaped by hand and broiled.

CHAPTER 02

The years nobody can reconcile

The competing claims all fall between 1885 and 1900, and they contradict each other. Wisconsin's resolution puts Charlie Nagreen at the first Seymour fair in 1885, selling at fifteen. The Erie County Fair, whose own 1885 fair ran 16 to 18 September, says Nagreen claimed to have sold his at the Outagamie county fair that October, after learning of the Menches success.

CHAPTER 03

Ground beef had to earn its way back

Upton Sinclair published The Jungle in 1906, and Americans turned wary of ground meat. In Wichita, Walter Anderson answered that by taking fresh beef twice a day and grinding it where customers could watch.

In March 1921 Anderson and Edgar Waldo "Billy" Ingram opened the White Castle System of Eating Houses. White stood for purity and Castle for strength and permanence. The first one was numbered 4, because Anderson already ran three hamburger stands in the city.

National Hamburger Day inherited the argument and none of the paperwork. Chase's Calendar of Events, which catalogues American observances, carried National Hamburger Month in its editions from 1993 to 2007 and lists the day in none of them. No founder or establishing record for it has been documented either.

GOOD TO KNOW

The towns that claim the hamburger

Hamburg, New York

The Erie County Fair says Frank and Charles Menches ran out of pork sausage at its 1885 fair, took a local butcher's advice to switch to ground beef, and named the result after the fair's home town.

Seymour, Wisconsin

Wisconsin's legislature says Charlie Nagreen began calling ground beef patties in a bun hamburgers in 1885, and ran a hamburger tent that employed as many as eight people.

Athens, Texas

The Texas legislature credits Fletcher Davis, a potter who kept a lunch counter on the courthouse square and served his sandwich on fresh-baked bread with ground mustard mixed with mayonnaise, Bermuda onion and sliced cucumber pickles.

Tulsa, Oklahoma

The Bilby family dates its hamburger to a Fourth of July cookout in 1891, on buttered yeast buns, and Governor Frank Keating proclaimed Oscar Bilby the inventor in 1995.

New Haven, Connecticut

A Library of Congress Local Legacies entry calls Louis' Lunch the home of the first hamburger in U.S. history, served there a century before the project ran in 2000.

TIMELINE

Timeline

Hamburg steak explains a tamale

A Napa Register article on tamales compared one step to chopping meat for Hamburg steak.

A cookbook with no hamburgers

The first edition of the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book printed Hamburg Steaks and never used the word hamburger.

The sandwich reaches print

A San Francisco Call story quoted a customer ordering a hamburger sandwich, the earliest use in California's digitised newspapers.

White Castle opens in Wichita

Walter Anderson and Billy Ingram opened the White Castle System of Eating Houses that March.

Hamburger gets a federal definition

Section 319.15, which defines hamburger, ground beef and beef patties, was published on 3 October.

Two states, one title

Wisconsin and Texas each designated a different town the Original Home of the Hamburger.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Hamburger Day

CLAIMS

The argument has its own festival calendar.

The Texas resolution records that Athens marks the hamburger's origins each June with Uncle Fletch's Burger and Bar-B-Q Cook-Off. Hamburg has run BurgerFest since 1985, the centenary of the Menches claim, and Akron hosts a National Hamburger Festival of its own.

LAW

Hamburger is a regulated word in the United States

A federal standard of identity bars added water, phosphates, binders and extenders from anything sold as hamburger. The same section puts those ingredients into a separate product, beef patties, which may carry them.

ECONOMY

The beef is most of what a burger costs

A home-prepared quarter-pound cheeseburger came to $1.84 in ingredients in 2020, on Economic Research Service figures drawn from Bureau of Labor Statistics prices. Ground beef alone accounted for $1.03 of that.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Hamburger Day by the Numbers

30%: Most fat a hamburger may contain
27+ lbs: Ground beef per person, 2020 estimate
>46%: Share of US retail beef consumption
150 lbs: Sold at Nagreen's tent on some days

Hamburger history is dripping with lies.

Erik OfgangWriting in The Washington Post

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Hamburger Day

Grind your own beef for the patties

Ask a butcher for chuck and have it coarsely ground, or run it through a grinder at home. Fannie Farmer's instruction still holds: handle the cakes as little as you can, because a patty pressed too compactly comes out solid.

READ

Read the resolution that named a hometown

Both Wisconsin's Assembly Joint Resolution 12 and Texas House Concurrent Resolution 15 run to a few short paragraphs. Each sets out its case in the plain language of a legislature that had decided to settle a food fight.

CHECK

Check the label before you buy patties

Turn the pack over in the freezer aisle and read what the front of it actually says. The two words are not interchangeable in American law, and thirty seconds tells you which one you are buying.

TRY

Try it the New Haven way, on toast

Louis' Lunch serves its hamburgers on white toast with a choice of onion, tomato or cheese and no condiments. Toast two slices at home and see whether you miss the bun.

EXPLAIN

Explain where the name actually points

The Texas resolution offers one theory, that local residents of German descent may have named the sandwich after the city of Hamburg. The Erie County Fair points instead at the village of Hamburg, New York, where its own fairground sits.

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