Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival

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Chocolate covered strawberries, strawberry smoothies, strawberry daiquiris, strawberry cheesecakes, strawberries and cream, even strawberries deep fried and of course there’s strawberry beer. This is what you can expect to find at the Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival and a whole lot more. You can count me in!

The Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival is held in the small northshore town of Ponchatoula, near Hammond.

The festival started in 1972 as a small block party with a baseball game and a parade as a bonuses. Today, the festival takes over the town with as many as 100,000 people line the downtown streets for the Saturday morning parade and altogether more than 300,000 people make the trek to the festival to celebrate the beloved strawberry.

There will be strawberry treats and drinks, plus a wide variety of other traditional fair food to indulge in. All of it is sold by non-profit groups that use the funds to keep their work going forward.

It’s a lot of food, but you can only eat so much. You can dance of the calories at the two stages that promise live music the whole weekend. Or you sign-up for the Strawberry Strut, an annual one mile fun run and 10k race.

Since it’s a fair like atmosphere, you know that there’s going to be rides too. There’s more than 50 rides for children of all ages to enjoy.
While the Festival has grown to epic proportions and attracts crowds from all over the state, it still hasn’t lost its small town charm. There are strawberry eating contests, egg tosses, sack races, strawberry auctions and lots of other fun activities. Plus, you can explore downtown Ponchatoula and shop through the antique stores, browse through strawberry vendors and much more.