The history of the Watermelon Festival

Hailey Heseltine ECB Publishing, Inc. For 73 years, Monticello has been the home of the annual Watermelon Festival, a time when Jefferson County has plenty of festivities to be found, both old and new alike. With all this excitement buzzing around town, the question of why we have a festival for watermelon often arises. Jefferson County has been an agricultural community since its beginning. For many decades, the primary crop produced by the county was cotton. With the introduction of the exotic watermelon seed, however, a change began taking root. William M. Girardeau, a local resident, took great interest in watermelon. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, he founded the Gir