Cerca: Moapa Valley celebrates pomegranates

LOGANDALE -- Every November, as autumn begins to temper the arid scald of Southern Nevada summer, the Moapa Valley Art Guild hosts a two-day celebration of an amazing fruit -- the pomegranate.

Held at the Clark County Fairgrounds in Logandale, the Moapa Valley Pomegranate Arts and Crafts Festival was organized 15 years ago to provide an outlet for residents to sell homemade products made from locally grown pomegranates and as an outdoor fall gala to raise funds for local art-related activities, according to Jackie Worthen, art guild president.

This year, the 16th annual festival has expanded to some 75 vendors who will open booths at the county fairgrounds Friday and Saturday to sell a wonderful variety of arts and crafts, including stained glass, paintings, drawings, wood crafts, and etched and blown glass products, Worthen said.

"We have six food vendors this year selling a little of everything, including Mexican food, ground sirloin burgers, polish sausages, funnel cakes, roasted corn and more," she said.

Additionally, growers from throughout the small verdant valley 60 miles north of Las Vegas will man booths to sell ripe pomegranates, jellies, syrups and juices made from recipes handed down from the earliest Southern Nevada pioneers.

A fruit-bearing deciduous shrub, the pomegranate is native only to the Iranian plateau. From there it spread throughout Asia, where for thousands of years it was cultivated in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, Armenia, Northern India, Israel and the drier parts of Southeast Asia, the East Indies and elsewhere. Over the centuries, the plant eventually made it to dry European areas and later the American West after being introduced into Latin America and California by Spanish settlers in 1769.

Although it's difficult to plot their exact course or the precise date pomegranates arrived in Southern Nevada, early historical accounts suggest they had to have been well established in Moapa Valley by the late 1890s or early 1900s, said Carol Bishop, University of Nevada Cooperative Extension educator for northeast Clark County.

"An historical account from about 1905 says Moapa Valley residents could benefit from the construction of a railroad spur that would allow them to sell fruit and vegetables grown in the valley to outside vendors," Bishop said. "One of the fruits listed in the account is pomegranates."

Whatever their arrival date, pomegranates have flourished for at least a century in Moapa Valley, which provides ideal growing conditions for the plant. By summer's end, huge, lush green bushes covered with fruit can be seen throughout the area like ragged Christmas trees decorated with bright red ornaments.

"Farmers used to plant pomegranates wherever they could get water -- in backyards, fields, along ditch banks, just everywhere, said Cheryl Rawson, matriarch of a Moapa Valley family that has produced pomegranate products for more than 30 years. "And the plants have just continued to grow and produce."

The Rawson family heads a co-op of Moapa Valley growers who produce and sell the fruit at the annual festival. They process a variety of syrups, juices and jellies, including Alligator Jelly and Bam Jam, "a delicious spread spicy enough to curl your toes," she said.

By the end of October, an army of Rawsons, friends and others will have swept Moapa Valley picking ripe pomegranates to prepare for the festival. Within days, the bushes will be bare of fruit and the pomegranates will have been processed into delicious fare.

There are approximately 500 cultivars of pomegranates worldwide, many of which grow in Southern Nevada. "Wonderful" is the most common variety in Moapa Valley.

And wonderful it is. The fruit boasts amazing health benefits. Research suggests that pomegranate juice fights at least three forms of cancer, protects arteries, fights osteoarthritis, might slow or prevent Alzheimer's disease and lowers blood pressure and cholesterol.

If pomegranates and rural festivities don't spark your interest, the 31st annual Hump-N-Bump off-road extravaganza is also scheduled for Friday and Saturday. Headquartered on the Clark County Fairgrounds, the event is the largest of its kind in Southern Nevada.

Hump-N-Bump participants camp at the fairgrounds, then drive off-road in the magnificent red rocks of the Logandale Trail System in everything from Jeeps to rock buggies worth tens of thousands of dollars.

On Friday evening, the Logandale Volunteer Fire Department will stage a Hump-N-Bump event adjacent to the fairgrounds in which drivers will have to negotiate a series of man-made obstacles during an Arena Off-Road Challenge.