The National Orange Show Festival is an annual
festival
A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, mela, or eid. A festival c ...
held in
San Bernardino
San Bernardino (; Spanish language, Spanish for Bernardino of Siena, "Saint Bernardino") is a city and county seat of San Bernardino County, California, United States. Located in the Inland Empire region of Southern California, the city had a ...
, California since 1911 to promote the
citrus industry
Citrus production encompasses the production of citrus fruit, which are the highest-value fruit crop in terms of international trade. There are two main markets for citrus fruit:
* The fresh fruit market
* The processed citrus fruits market (ma ...
. At the height of its popularity between 1960 and the mid-1980s, the event ran a full two weeks during the month of March and featured displays from most counties in California. The show was cancelled for five years, from 1942 to 1946, due to
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, and since 2020 caused by
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
concerns, although it went virtual.
Due to a changing economic environment, the show has been downsized considerably with a local community emphasis, instead of a national or state one, and is now a weekend event.
References
Festivals in California
Tourist attractions in San Bernardino County, California
History of San Bernardino, California
Orange production
1911 establishments in California
Culture of San Bernardino, California
{{california-stub
External links
Image of a woman emerging from a giant orange at the center of the Redlands display at the National Orange Show, San Bernardino, 1935.Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
Photographic Archive (Collection 1429). UCLA Library Special Collections,
Charles E. Young Research Library,
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...
.