
Top 10 "All American Food Festival" in the Nation!
History:
It all started in 1992 with an idea by Dave Hernandez, a member of the Downtown Indio Merchants Association.
The rich heritage of the tamale, consistent community support and hard working tamale makers have created the festival’s tremendous success.
Recently, the Food Network-TV ranked the Indio International Tamale Festival in the top 10 “All-American Food Festivals” in the nation!
Festival’s Guinness World Records:
The World’s largest Tamale-over 1 foot in diameter and 40 feet in length, Dec. 4, 1999. The World’s largest tamale festival-with 120,000 in attendance, Dec. 2-3, 2000.
The Biggest Coachella Valley Festival
Proud Sponsor since 1995
The Riverside County Fair & National Date Festival is located 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.
Dates were an unknown commodity in the 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 for the area. Date groves in the Coachella Valley were and still are such a novelty that they became quite 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....