Riverside County Date Festival 2012

The Riverside County Fair & National Date Festival 2012 is being held February 17 through February 26. This will be the 66th annual festival with well over 300,000 visitors expected to attend in 2012. Fair goers will enjoy The Rainforest experience, the Hypnotist Show, crazy camel and ostrich races, Nightly Musical Pagaent, Monster trucks, and live Entertainment that includes: Hot Chelle Rae and a battle of the bands with the winner getting $5,000 worth of Fender equipment.

The Riverside County Fair & National Date Festival is being held in Indio, California, an oasis situated in the vast California desert, approximately 130 miles east from Los Angeles. The Fair started as a festival to celebrate the end of the annual date harvest in the desert region, the major commercial date-producing area in the western hemisphere.

The Date Festival has hundreds of exhibits and competitions related to dates. Highlights include a Date Festival Queen and her court, monster trucks rodeo events and of course dates. The Fair started as a festival to celebrate the end of the annual date harvest in the desert region, the major commercial date-producing area in the western hemisphere.

Dates were an unknown in the Southern California desert until 1903 when date palms were transplanted there from Algeria. By the early 1920’s enough acreage was planted to make dates a major crop. Date groves in the Coachella Valley were and still are such a novelty that they became a tourist attraction. With the popularity of the date gardens the idea was planted for the first Date Festival in 1921 to be held in Indio’s city park.