Arizona State Citrus Show

ARIZONA CITRUS HOLDS THE SPOTLIGHT DURING FIESTA WEEK IN EARLY SPRING ORANGES are turning golden on the trees in the sunbathed Salt River Valley of Arizona-in yards and gardens, and in the great wide groves which never saw a smudgepot; even, in Mesa, home of the Arizona State Citrus Show, in the parkways in the center of its wide streets.

Mesa counts its annual Arizona State Citrus Show the event number one on the calendar. It comes in spring and spring in the Valley of the Sun comes in late February.

The Arizona State Citrus Show opens on the last Sunday in February and closes on the first Sunday in March, 1941. Those Cleverly costumed children and citrus fruit-two of the most popular means employed to carry the citrus theme in the gay parade on one of the elaborate little floats. First and second grade children in a Mesa school sponsored, helped to build and rode on this float.

Arizona State CITRUS SHOW

These eight days are days of celebration in Mesa, already preparing for the ninth annual show. Beauty reigns as Mesa proudly presents its pageantry to demonstrate the glorious fertility of the reclaimed desert. The remarkable achievements of the past thirty years are exemplified by the citrus industry, on parade.

Mesa is in gay Spanish regalia for the event; tight fitting flared trousers, bright skirts and boleros, the great sombreros. Mexico, less than two hundred miles south, lends many elaborate costumes for the event. Bright gold and green bunting flies on the streets; great bowls in the middle of the street are overflowing with fruit; oranges are everywhere.

The Spanish theme is adopted for social events, and civic organizations join in the celebration of the gala Citrus Week.

Exposition hall is filled to overflowing with the choicest citrus fruit of the land for the show-field boxes, plates, trees, laden with fruit; the non-commercial varieties are included as well as oranges, grapefruit, lemons, limes, and tangerines.

Dates and pecans, two other important crops of the valley, are included among displays, although not in competition.

Homemakers have their department, with hundreds of foods made with citrus fruit or juices as ingredientscandies, jellies and preserves, cakes, pies, cookies and specialties.

The show is annually opened by the governor of the state. The celebration includes a gay pageant in which the The Arizona Citrus Show Miniature Parade, featuring children and tiny floats is both unusual and entertaining. The attractiveness of the floats as well as the artfulness of participants puts the parade in a class by itself.

Near the city are "frostless"; citrus trees are delicate, but seldom does the temperature drop into the twenties to bite the tender evergreen leaves. Some varieties, such as lemons and limes, blossom and fruit all year around, and it is not unusual to find mature fruit, blossoms and half-developed fruit all on a single tree at any time of the year.

Flower gardens are coming into full bloom in Mesa at Citrus Show time.

The citrus industry, developed for the most part in the past quarter-century since the completion of great Roosevelt dam, sixty miles above Mesa on the Salt River, is in its glory in Arizona.

Large groves near Mesa send or anges, grapefruit, lemons, limes and other varieties to all parts of the nation and to the world through two large cooperative packing and marketing concerns. Other shippers and packers in Salt river valley towns, neighbors of Mesa, send floats to the Miniature Parade. School Comic and grotesque characters also have their part in the Miniature Parade, to add also to the enjoyment of spectators. School groups vie with each other in making attractive floats.

Arizona Citrus Queen is crowned, replete with dancing, music, song. Nightly programs of entertainment follow. Dances and music are interspersed with floor shows, Indian dances and ceremonials, novelty acts. A glittering midway and games add to the fun.

But the single event on the show program to which its spectators look for ward is the annual Citrus Parade. Unique, and as spectacular as it is unusual, it is a serpentine of floats done in miniature. And the tiny floats are excellent mediums of expression, in which it is possible to employ intricate design and elaborate detail which would be impossible or impractical in larger floats. Popular? Thousands literally jam Mesa streets and crowd on balconies and roofs to watch it wind through the city. Its route has been extended to accommodate a growing number of spectators.

Children play an important part in the parade, many, dressed us flowers or in some more conventional but elaborate costumes, riding on the tiny vehicles; others drawing floats. Small animals in bright trappings pull some. Escorts are girls of a marching squad, in western costume.

A band in western costume-chaps, ten-gallon hats, boots, lariats and allleads the serpentine.

Many of the floats remain on display in exposition hall throughout the show.

The Arizona Citrus Show has an excellent setting in Mesa. Wide areas Other valley districts also vie with the local ones for prizes in displays at the show, competitive prizes, and floats in the parade. Mesa, in the heart of the citrus land, uses the beautiful evergreen trees in landscaping as well as commercially. In the parkways at the sides of its eighty-foot streets, and in parks in the center of the streets, it has planted many trees.

Orange trees vie with the stately palms in popularity in landscaping in Mesa and the valley.

Other communities in the citrus-producing areas of the state join in the presentation of the exposition. It has consistently broken attendance records each year.

The show, while it has added through the years many entertaining features, is essentially presented by its sponsors,children throughout the valley deem it a great honor to take part in this annual event.

During the week-long Arizona state citrus show the finest fruit grown in the Salt river valley is displayed at exhibition hall, where competition is held in many lines related to citrus, fruit and nut culture. The Miniature Parade is only one of a long list of interesting events held during the citrus show.developments that culturists and experimental groups are making with citrus today.

To the layman, therefore, the Arizona Citrus show is highly educational and enlightening. Every producer in the state will display his very finest products. Many of these products have not been commercially developed, yet they reveal just what can happen and is happening through experimentation and careful study in the world of Arizona citrus.

Music, gaiety and youth these are the three ingredients that form the pattern entwined around the Arizona state citrus show.the Mesa Chamber of Commerce, as a tribute to Arizona citrus, one of the im-portant contributors to the wealth of the state.

Because of ideal climatic conditions in this state, Arizona citrus vies with the citrus products of California, Texas, Florida and Spain. The show is a means of centering the spotlight of attention on the various forms of citrus and on the Mesa is the gateway to the Super-stition Mountain area and to that great expanse of mountainous scenery and rugged picturesqueness into which the Apache Trail carries so many visitors each season. With heavy rains of Jan-uary causing mountain streams to flow as they have not flowed in the past ten years, the runoff into the storage dams makes more delightful than ever this trip along the Apache Trail.