Festival Goers Love The Land Of The Dates

They’re sweet-tasting.

“It’s like eating candy, but you can have it. You don’t have to feel guilty,” Julie Rosenberg said.

They’re money making.

“They’re about a 35 million dollar a year business,” Lorrie Cooper, manager of the California Date Administrative Committee, said.

They’re even good for baking.

“They can make muffins, breads, ice cream shakes,” Martha Delgado said.

“Dates came to the Coachella Valley back in the mid to late 1800s,” Cooper said.

The 66th Annual Riverside County Fair and National Date Festival celebrates the fruit people can’t get enough of.

“We have over 9300 acres of dates growing,” Cooper added.

“That’s what we learned it as first, the Date Festival, and then we learned it’s the Riverside County fair,”Rosenberg said.

The festival houses samples upon samples of all kinds of dates.

“We have no fat, no sodium, and no cholesterol,” Cooper boasted.

Ninety five percent of dates in the United States are grown in the Coachella Valley.

This is just opening weekend of the festival — it runs all the way until February 26th.