This is watermelon season in Arkansas. Today, while traveling in Benton (Saline County), I noticed a steady stream of drivers on Military Road turning into a parking lot where a street vendor advertised Cave City Watermelons.
Cave City--which is situated on the border of Sharp and Independence counties--has in recent years emerged as the home of some mighty tasty melons. In a few days both Cave City and the unofficial watermelon capital of Arkansas, Hope, will each sponsor three-day watermelon festivals.
Despite the festivals, we tend to take watermelons for granted. But in the years before air conditioning, a juicy melon provided a cooling respite from the seemingly endless Arkansas summer.
Our ancestors often grew watermelons. One Ouachita County farm woman, writing in an 1876 letter, excitedly announced that a part of the family garden was being set aside exclusively for watermelons. Children were fond of watermelons--and teenage boys were known to steal melons under the cover of darkness.
Hope began to develop a reputation for large watermelons almost a century ago when C.S. Lowthorp, an agricultural business representative of the Louisiana and Arkansas Railroad, began developing markets for various farm products, including watermelons. Lowthorp contracted with local farmers and was especially interested in marketing extra-large watermelons--which he sold at a premium.
In 1916 a Hope merchant by the name of John S. Gibson Sr. began offering small prizes for the largest vegetables produced in the area, including watermelons. Among the farmers competing were brothers Hugh and Edgar Laseter who in 1925 grew several large melons. The Laseters, who both stand tall and dignified in old photographs, entered several melons in the competition that year. Hugh easily won the competition with a 136-pound specimen that astonished onlookers.
The Laseter melon was immediately shipped to President Calvin Coolidge, who was vacationing in Massachusetts. The melon presentation ceremony was broadcast on radio. Gibson, the contest sponsor, realized that many people did not own a radio, and he set up one on the street in front of his store, where a large crowd listened proudly.
The success of the competition was not lost on local boosters, and a festival was quickly organized. The festival was an overnight success, with large crowds attending from across south Arkansas and even out of state. In 1928, for example, 30,000 people came out for the festivities. Rex Nelson, who knows more than anyone else about Arkansas food, has noted the importance of railroads in recruiting large crowds: "Many visitors traveled on the Missouri Pacific, Frisco and Louisiana & Arkansas special trains from Little Rock, Shreveport, and Oklahoma."
And the early festivals were certainly festive. A parade with dozens of sophisticated floats, marching bands, school groups, and local officials was a highlight of the event. Following a beauty pageant, a festival queen was crowned by a visiting dignitary, who then proceeded to give an address. Slices of watermelon were provided free of charge to festival visitors. The celebration usually ended with a dance at the Elks Hall or the skating rink.
It was never easy for the small town of Hope to handle the logistics of such a large and costly festival, but the arrival of the Depression made matters impossible. The 1930 festival was the last, until 1977.
In 1976, during the American Revolution Bicentennial Celebration, local Hope promoter C.E. "Pod" Rogers convinced the chamber of commerce to bring back the watermelon festival. Rogers became a tireless promoter of the Hope watermelon--which he called "the Eighth Wonder of the World." While it has lost much of the pageantry of the earlier festivals, the modern Hope Watermelon Festival continues to attract large crowds and big watermelons.
Many of the larger melons competing in the revived festival have come from a farm on a sandy ridge east of Hope owned by Ivan Bright. In 1979, Bright and his son Lloyd broke the 200-pound ceiling, and in 1985 Ivan's grandson Jason won the competition with a 260-pound specimen. In 2005 Lloyd Bright raised the bar higher with a 268-pound vegetable leviathan. Based on a brief Internet search, it appears that a Tennessee man now holds the record for the largest melon: 350.5 pounds.
Cave City's reputation as the home of tasty watermelons has grown slowly. Its first festival was held in 1980--the hottest and driest summer in memory. By the time the festival rolled around in August, almost all the local farmers had lost their crops to drought. However, Herschel Runsick, who grew his melons in the moist Strawberry River bottoms, was able to provide melons for the 2,400 people at the one-day event.
The Cave City festival does not emphasize large melons. Watermelon purists stress that the large competitive melons are not known for their flavor--while the Cave City melons are advertised as the "World's Sweetest Watermelons."
This year's Hope Watermelon Festival will be held Thursday-Saturday, while the Cave City folks will be celebrating two weeks later, August 9-11.
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in rural Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com.
Editorial on 07/22/2018