When an anticipated 70,000 people crowd into downtown Fallbrook for Sunday's 23rd annual Avocado Festival, most will see a modern street fair promoting the town's flagship industry with avocado-flavored oddities and more than 350 vendors, the North County Times reported.
But for those who recall a vivid history of agriculture and pioneer spirit, the festival harks back more than half a century, to a time when the train still stopped in Fallbrook, when crops were more plentiful than neighborhoods, and when the avocado had yet to take its place as king of the local economy.
An early version of the Avocado Festival called Pioneer Days thrived here in the 1940s, '50s and '60s, members of the Fallbrook Historical Society said last week.
