Indio's Date Festival

Since the turn of the 20th century, Southern California s Coachella Valley has embraced a unique crop: the date. As success with the fruit grew, so too did regional celebrations of it. Beginning in 1921, the City of Indio hosted a Festival of Dates, an event that became the annual National Date Festival in 1947. The area linked itself to the date s birthplace, the Greater Middle East, in multiple ways, but the festival drew national attention to Indio s use of these Arabian fantasies. Attendees celebrated the fair s camel races, Arabian Nights musical pageant, Middle Eastern architecture, Queen Scheherazade pageant, and the costumes worn by boosters and visitors alike. While the United States political and pop-cultural relationship to the region changed over time, the Eastern Coachella Valley continued to embrace fantasies of the Middle East at its fair."