National Date Festival puts down roots in Indio

About 500,000 people are expected to attend the 66th annual Riverside County Fair and National Date Festival this weekend. The festival opened Friday.

The first major date harvest in the Coachella Valley was just over a century ago. Today, says Sarah McCormick Seekatz, the desert region produces about 95 percent of all dates consumed in the U.S.

“There’s a proverb that says dates need to have their feet in the water and their heads in the sun," says Seekatz, a UC Riverside grad student and Indio native researching the history of the Valley’s date industry for her dissertation.

Seekatz says the festival was originally hatched around 1920. Even though it was the Spanish who introduced the fruit to the region, Arabian themes were weaved into the event — and even into local architecture and place names.

"When [the festival] started using the Arabian themes in the 1920s, the Middle East was really in vogue.”

But over time, the romance faded.

"By the 1970s you have the hostage crisis and the oil embargo," Seekatz explained, "which is putting a face on the Middle East that is very different than the imagined Middle East of '1,001 Arabian Nights.' It’s outgrowing this kind of kitschy, Arabian-centered idea, and it’s becoming more like an average county fair.”

One with concerts from big pop acts such as LeAnn Rimes, a demolition derby and — of course — pig racing. But the weeklong event still kicks off with the traditional “blessing of the dates,” followed by a date shake toast from the winner of the Queen Scheherazade scholarship pageant.

The National Date Festival runs through next weekend (Feb. 26) at the Riverside County fairgrounds in Indio.