Castroville Artichoke Festival
The Castroville Artichoke Festival was a yearly food festival in California that ran from 1959 to 2025. It started in Castroville, which calls itself the “Artichoke Center of the World,” and moved to the Monterey County Fair and Event Center in 2014 as the event grew larger.
Artichokes came to California with Italian immigrants in the late 1800s. Castroville planted its first artichokes in the 1920s, and by 1926 California had thousands of acres of artichokes, most of them in Castroville.
The festival grew from an earlier May Days celebration and added a pancake breakfast and barbecue. In 1959, the Castroville Artichoke Advisory Board formed and gave the event its name. It was a two‑day May festival that attracted thousands of visitors (about 20,000 in 2011).
Events and features included a parade, live music, an agro-art competition, farmers markets, field tours, artichoke foods (fried, sautéed, grilled, marinated, pickled, soup, even cupcakes), souvenir sales, a wine/beer garden, cooking demos, a 5K beach run, a canasta race, a quilt challenge, and a Marilyn Monroe look‑alike contest. Queen titles were part of the festival: Marilyn Monroe was the first Honorary Artichoke Queen in 1948; the first Festival Artichoke Queen was crowned in 1961, and the first Artichoke King was crowned in 1974 (Andrew O’Desky). William Hung was Artichoke King in 2006.
The festival was canceled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the 61st anniversary pushed to 2021. It permanently ended in 2025 because of financial issues.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 08:11 (CET).