BRIGHAM CITY – Peach Days in Brigham City put on quite a shindig over the weekend. Peaches are one of Box Elder County’s biggest assets and they have quite a celebration to showcase them. They hosted two parades: one Friday night and one Saturday during the day.
The parades generate a lot of excitement for the kids and so does the large free car show in the park. Historic Main Street had chairs and blankets covering most of the main drag in anticipation of the parade.
Over 200 vendors were lined up to sell their goods and the food court was packed with all types of food from different countries.
Brett and Kristine Crocket from St. George finish their Peach Days lunch on Sept. 6, 2024. on Friday
Box Elder Chamber of Commerce CEO Monica Holdaway said she thought the town of 18,000 residents blows up to nearly three times their population for the celebration.
“I think we had just about 50,000 visitors in town this past weekend,” she said. “We had the ABBA tribute band, Euphoria. It’s one of the biggest crowds I remember at Peach Days.”
City of Fun Carnival, the biggest little show in Utah for over 40 years, had their rides and midway set up for all visitors this weekend. There was live entertainment both Friday and Saturday.
Peach Days 2024 is one of the longest running fruit celebrations in the country.
“We sold over 1,000 tickets before City of Fun got here,” Holdaway said. “And they had long lines so I’m sure they did well.”
They had over 100 cars at the car show and Grammys Produce set up a booth at the car show to sell peaches. The parades were fun; they had the 43 ft. Golden Spike replica in the parade.
Thade Tagge of Tagge’s Famous Fruit and Veggie Farm took his fruit stand on the road and set up at Main and Forest Street. I
“There was a lot of traffic, and I thought the fruit stand during Peach Days was good for us,” he said. “The peach stands along Hwy 89 are busy during Peach Days. It brings in a lot of people.”
He said the Early Elberta Peaches are heirloom peaches that attracted a lot of people in the beginning but since then they have expanded the varieties of peaches.
“Every fruit stand is busy this time of year. The festival brings a lot of people from out of the woodwork,” Tagge said. “We had a good crop this year and we still have some left.”
“People come from everywhere. They come from Ogden, Logan and Southern Idaho,” Tagge added. “This is the second year we had a stand downtown to sell peaches and we were glad we did.”
He said the thing about Peach Days and The Box Elder County Fair is there is no entry fee. If you go to the Utah State Fair you have to shell out about $50 just to get through the door. That means there is less money to spend on stuff.
The other good thing about Peach Days is it is cleaned up Sunday morning.
“When we got up to leave from our hotel room we got outside and the place looked like a ghost town,” he said. “There was no sign anything went on here.”
Brigham City boasts Peach Days is the longest running fruit celebration in the country that they know of.