By Brenda Eubanks Burnette
In 1924, a group of citrus growers in Winter Haven decided to showcase Florida’s burgeoning citrus industry with a celebration they originally called the Winter Haven Orange Festival. The event included business booths, beautiful displays of citrus fruit and a search for a young woman to represent the industry during the three-day festival. The festival was held around the downtown city park and was so successful that it was decided it would be an annual event.
Photo courtesy of the State Archives of Florida
R.A. Nichols, Frank Senn, Charles F. Lathers and John F. May were the founding organizers. After the 1928 festival, they created a permanent organization with a paid manager. In her book, “History of Winter Haven,” author Josephine Burr noted that May was elected president of the board, and the name was changed to Florida Orange Festival. J.B. Guthrie was hired as manager.
The city made available several blocks of land on North Third Street near Lake Silver. A nationally known carnival company was also hired to entertain the public.
“This was the time of national and international upheaval in the world. Florida recovered from the Mediterranean fruit fly epidemic, the crash of 1929 and the years of horrible depression in the early 1930s, but the festival occurred each year and was enjoyed by many people,” Burr wrote.
Since 1934, entertainers such as Ted Malone, Chuck Acree, Johnny Olsen and other radio entertainers performed during festival week in Winter Haven. Tom Moore, of Mutual Broadcasting System, broadcast his shows from 1948 through 1954. In 1955, the “Florida Calling” show was broadcast five days a week from the exposition building for a year under the sponsorship of the Florida Citrus Commission.
In 1949, the Florida Department of Agriculture built the large Florida Citrus Building right next to the exposition grounds, with Nora Mayo Hall (seating 2,000 people) making it possible to hold the fresh fruit contests, the queen contests and the coronation ball.
The event began to be known as the Florida Citrus Exposition, and major television shows continued to highlight the exposition due to the new building. Shows included the “Garry Moore Show,” “I’ve Got A Secret,” the “Peter Lind Hayes Show,” “Supermarket Sweep,” and, for the first time in color, the “Mike Douglas Show.” The Florida Citrus Commission paid for these nationally broadcast television shows. They were seen by millions of Americans, so the Florida Citrus Exposition was “in the national news each year.”
By the mid-60s, the event had outgrown the downtown area, and a new building was constructed. The Florida Citrus Showcase, or “Orange Dome,” housed dioramas of the industry and a small citrus museum. The name was changed to the Florida Citrus Festival, but the freezes of the 80s slowly chipped away at the industry presence. By 2008, the Florida Citrus Showcase had gone out of business. The city of Winter Haven razed the Orange Dome to make way for restaurants and parking. Yet many still remember the “golden years” of the Florida Orange Festival in Winter Haven and how much publicity it garnered for the industry at a time when huge crops were being harvested. That much-needed marketing is what helped sell those crops!
Brenda Eubanks Burnette is executive director of the Florida Citrus Hall of Fame. Pieces of the Past is presented in partnership with Florida Southern College’s McKay Archives Center in Lakeland.
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