09/02/2026
It's 1873 and Franz Kirchhoff, a young Prussian immigrant, and his wife, Hannah Baumer, open Kirchhoff's in a small building in downtown Paducah, Kentucky. Living above the bakery, the family (soon to include Franz's son and grandson) provided baked goods for the tables in Paducah as well as riverboat travelers headed in and out on the Ohio River until 1957.
In 1996, the family (lead by Louis Frank Kirchhoff, the great-grandson of Franz) reacquired the Market Square property and, in 1997, the fifth generation of Kirchhoff's reopened the bakery and deli.
In 2026, 153 years since the doors originally opened, they served the guy in the photo the best chocolate chip cookie that he's ever had. Oh, the roads traveled by everyone to get us to this very point in time...
