Close your eyes and imagine you're walking down your neighborhood street on a beautiful October afternoon with your family.

The air is cool and crisp. Colorful leaves crunch under your feet.

As you walk, you notice something special on almost every porch.

There are pumpkins everywhere. Some are big and round. Some are small and bumpy. Some have

funny faces carved into them with triangle eyes and toothy grins. The carved pumpkins glow

from the inside with flickering candles. They look spooky and fun at the same time.

Your sibling tugs on your mom's hand and says,

Can we get pumpkins too?

I want to carve one.

Your parents smile and agree.

You all decide to visit a pumpkin patch this weekend

to pick out the perfect pumpkins for your front porch.

But have you ever wondered where pumpkins came from

or why they are carved for Halloween?

The story is more interesting than you might think.

Pumpkins have been around for a very long time.

They're native to North America, which means they originally grew wild here thousands of years ago.

Scientists have found pumpkin seeds at ancient sites that are between 7,000 and 7,500 years old.

That's way before any Europeans came to America.

The oldest pumpkin seeds were discovered in caves in Mexico.

These ancient pumpkins didn't look like the big orange pumpkins we see today. They were smaller and harder, more like gourds.

Native Americans were the first people to grow pumpkins as crops.

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