The story
National Peanut Festival in Dothan
The National Peanut Festival is the largest peanut festival in the United States, held each fall in Dothan, Alabama, since its establishment in 1938 to honor peanut growers and celebrate the harvest season. The festival runs annually except for a wartime pause between 1942 and 1946 and a 2020 pandemic-year disruption, featuring a midway, agricultural exhibits, concerts, and a parade at its fairgrounds south of the city.
In the early twentieth century, the boll weevil devastated cotton crops across the American South, forcing farmers in Alabama's Wiregrass region, the area surrounding Dothan, to diversify away from the single crop that had long dominated the regional economy.