Fulton, Kentucky: Banana Capital of the Nation

Sitting right on the Kentucky-Tennessee line, the little city of Fulton once held a peculiar stranglehold on the American breakfast table. The Illinois Central Railroad ran freight between New Orleans and Chicago, and bananas from South America arrived at New Orleans by ship, loaded onto refrigerated rail cars packed with one-hundred-sixty-two-pound blocks of ice. Fulton had the only ice house on the entire route north, which meant that by the nineteen twenties more than seventy percent of all bananas eaten in the United States passed through this single small stop to be re-iced and rerouted.

The city proudly claimed the title Banana Capital of the Nation. In nineteen sixty-two residents launched an annual Banana Festival to celebrate the legacy, complete with a one-ton banana pudding billed as the world's largest. The rail era faded and the festivals eventually paused, but Fulton and its sister city across the state line still revive the tradition most Septembers.