Ask anybody around here why Fulton throws a party for bananas every September, and you will probably hear the same answer: the railroad.
Fulton grew up as a railroad town, sitting right on the state line with South Fulton, Tennessee. Its central spot on the line between New Orleans and Chicago made it a natural place to stop, sort and send freight on its way north.
Bananas were a big part of that freight. Fruit companies shipped bananas from Central and South America to New Orleans, where they were loaded into railcars packed with ice. According to Fulton’s tourism office, the blocks weighed about 162 pounds each, and Fulton had the only ice house on the route north to Chicago. Every banana car stopped here to be re-iced with blocks from the Fulton Ice Plant before heading on.
That stop added up. Fulton tourism says that at one point more than 70 percent of the bananas eaten in the United States passed through town. That is how Fulton earned the title “The Banana Capital of the World.”
A festival with a one-ton pudding
The ice plant is closed now, and the banana trains are long gone, but the twin cities never let go of the nickname. The International Banana Festival keeps it alive, and its best-known tradition is a banana pudding said to weigh one ton. It is paraded through town and then served to the crowd.
Over the years the festival has also welcomed visitors from Latin America, a nod to the countries where the bananas came from. Guests from a dozen countries have taken part.
It is a small-town story with a big reach. The next time you peel a banana, there is a decent chance its great-grandparents rode through Fulton on a block of ice.
Did your family work at the ice plant or on the railroad? We would love to hear about it at news@southwestky.com.
Source: Fulton Tourism, Why Bananas?
Photo: Workers unload bananas from a ship in New Orleans in the 1920s, the first stop before the trip north through Fulton. Arnold Genthe, Library of Congress, public domain.
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