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After the peaches, roses

Droughts, freezes and disease wiped out the area’s peach orchards, and according to the Handbook of Texas, a peach blight led many Tyler-area farmers to grow roses.1Tyler is often called the Rose Capital of America, and also the Rose City.2

Read the story The 93rd festival

Plate IThe open bloom

From 1879 to the early 1990s

  1. 1879First recorded sale of rose plants near Tyler3
  2. 1917First train carload of rose bushes shipped4
  3. 1933First rose festival in Tyler, held in October5
  4. By the 1940sMore than half of the nation’s rose bushes were grown within ten miles of Tyler6
  5. 1952The Municipal Rose Garden officially opened, with nearly 3,000 bushes donated by local nurseries7
  6. By the early 1990sFewer than 50 Texas growers produced 8 to 10 million bushes a year, 16 to 20 percent of the U.S. crop8

Tyler no longer grows half the nation’s roses; the local industry has since shifted largely from growing roses to processing them.9

The story, entry by entry

Two figures, two measures

More than halfof the nation’s rose bushes were grown within ten miles of Tyler, by the 1940s.6
16 to 20 percentof the U.S. crop came from fewer than 50 Texas growers, by the early 1990s.8

The two count different things, and no figure for the decades between them appears in these sources. The chart and its table

The 93rd Texas Rose FestivalOctober 15 to 18, 2026

Opens tomorrow

The 93rd Texas Rose Festival opens tomorrow, Thursday, October 15, and runs to Sunday, October 18.

“Celebrations Through the Seasons”10

The festival’s events include the Queen’s Coronation, the Ribbon Cutting and Rose Presentation, the Queen’s Tea and the Rose Parade.11The parade starts at 9 a.m. on Saturday, October 17, at Front Street and Glenwood Boulevard and ends inside Rose Stadium.12

The festival program The Rose Queens, 1933 to 2026

The Municipal Rose Garden

The Tyler Rose Garden at 420 Rose Park Dr. covers 14 acres and is free and open dawn to dark every day, as listed in September 2026.13It officially opened in 1952.7

Counts of its bushes differ: more than 38,000 in a September 2025 report and about 15,000 in May 2026, both in the Tyler Morning Telegraph.14

The garden

Acres
14
Where
420 Rose Park Dr.
Cost
Free
Open
Dawn to dark, every day
Opened
1952

Viva La RosaA quinceañera float in the Rose Parade, since 2022

It began in 2022, when immigration lawyer Ginger Young brought a quinceañera float to the Rose Parade.15The float traditionally brings more than 30 quinceañeras along with baile folklórico, Aztec dancers, a Tejano band and Mariachi Los Caporales.16

Viva La Rosa Leer en español