Maybe you’ve never given much thought to where your watermelon comes from. Frankly, when you cut into a big, round, green melon and bite into the sweet, juicy pink flesh inside, you’re probably not thinking about anything else. But it’s worth thinking about, right? Any given fruit takes a long journey from the farm to your fridge, and it’s easy to catch yourself wondering where that journey began. Well, if you believe a certain small town’s claim, your watermelon may well have originated in Cordele, Georgia, which calls itself “the watermelon capital of the world.”
Cordele, a town of about 10,000 people, 150 miles south of Atlanta, may otherwise be best known for briefly being Georgia’s capital during Sherman’s March to the Sea towards the end of the Civil War. But today, it’s mostly known for its watermelon: the area around Cordele, and in broader Crisp County, grows some 200 million pounds of the crop every year. (The state that grows the most watermelon, however, is sunny Florida.) Watermelon thrives in hot weather with somewhat loamy soil, and — wouldn’t you know it? — that’s exactly the kind of environment you’ll find in Cordele.
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Cordele boasts a watermelon festival each year
A hand holding a large slice of watermelon. – Anri Flay/Shutterstock
Cordele isn’t the only town to declare itself the world’s watermelon capital. There’s Hope, Arkansas, which features a watermelon on its town sign; Weatherford, Texas, while no longer a major player in the watermelon world, once had a huge watermelon sculpture outside its courthouse; and Green River, Utah, which has a large watermelon sculpture of its own. But apparently, the matter was settled with a competition between Cordele, Hope, and Hempstead, Texas, with Cordele as the victor.
Today, Cordele’s Watermelon Festival occurs each summer, with all sorts of festivities to mark the occasion. There’s a parade, a beauty pageant, an enormous farmer’s market, and a couple of different contests, including a watermelon-eating contest and a watermelon seed-spitting contest. (If you don’t want to make a contest of spitting them out, you can always roast those seeds instead.) Georgia may be more famous for its peaches and its peanuts, but Cordele’s festival (not to mention its prodigious watermelon production) makes it clear that the Empire State of the South has a wide range of agriculture to be proud of. Just be sure to avoid unripe watermelon if you find yourself at that farmer’s market
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