Jacksonville Will Celebrate The Tomato At The 37th Tomato Fest

Get our free mobile app

Jacksonville is know for their tomatoes and they celebrate it a big way each year.

The tomato is big business in Jacksonville. It's so big they named the high schools' stadium after the tomato, the Tomato Bowl. Plus, while driving through Jacksonville, you'll no doubt see huge 600 pound concrete tomatoes in front of businesses showing their support for the city and the vegetable (which is really a fruit) that made this East Texas town famous. Jacksonville likes to lay claim to being the tomato capital of the world.

This June the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce will be hosting the 37th annual Tomato Fest in downtown Jacksonville. It'll be a week long event ending with a huge street festival on Saturday, June 12th and capped off with a street dance. Events during this years' Tomato Fest include the following:

tomato eating contest
salsa contest
best homegrown tomato contest
Tomato Fest 'Diced'
Farm To Table
Mr. & Mrs. Tomato Fest Pageant
dodgeball tournament
soccer tournament
5k run
car show
many more activities and contests

Saturday's big festival kicks off around 8 a.m. as five blocks of downtown Jacksonville will be filled with vendors, food, a Farmer's Market, fried green tomatoes, the site of many tomato competitions and live entertainment and other shows.

It was back in 2010 that Jacksonville's Tomato Fest earned a Guinness World Record for the World's Largest Bowl of Salsa. Hundreds of volunteer took to the steps of the Tomato Bowl to create a 2,672 pound bowl of salsa that was documented by the Food Network show 'Glutton For Punishment'. Part of that world record bowl is still on display on the steps of the football stadium.

Check out the website for all the scheduled activities during Tomato Week in Jacksonville and we look forward to seeing you there too on Saturday, June 12th in downtown Jacksonville.

YUM: Check Out These 12 Mouth-Watering Eats And Treats Coming To The Texas State Fair

READ ON: See the States Where People Live the Longest

Stacker used data from the 2020 County Health Rankings to rank every state's average life expectancy from lowest to highest. The 2020 County Health Rankings values were calculated using mortality counts from the 2016-2018 National Center for Health Statistics. The U.S. Census 2019 American Community Survey and America's Health Rankings Senior Report 2019 data were also used to provide demographics on the senior population of each state and the state's rank on senior health care, respectively.

Read on to learn the average life expectancy in each state.