# The Rose Capital

> What the sources say about Tyler, Texas, and its roses: the peach blight, the nurseries, the Municipal Rose Garden, the Texas Rose Festival and its queens, and Viva La Rosa. Each claim cites its fact.

The Rose Capital is a small site about the rose industry, the Municipal Rose Garden, the Texas Rose Festival and Viva La Rosa in Tyler, Texas. Every claim about Tyler rests on one of 273 checked facts and carries a numbered note; the notes at the end of each page give the claim as filed and its sources, and the sources page lists every fact by id. The name The Rose Capital is this site's own label, not a title the sources establish. Facts were collected and checked on 2026-09-29. It is an independent project by Tyler Sites (https://tylersites.com); it is not affiliated with the City of Tyler.

## Pages
- [Home](https://roses-bice.vercel.app/): "After the peaches, roses": what the Handbook of Texas says about a peach blight and Tyler's roses, the record from 1879 to the early 1990s on a time axis, the two figures, the festival, the garden and Viva La Rosa.
- [Story](https://roses-bice.vercel.app/story): nine chapters from the peach orchards to processing today: the four dates the sources give for the peach blight, side by side; the first growers (1840s to 1928); the nurseries by name from their catalogs (1926 to 1959); roses bred in Tyler ('Texas Centennial', Plant Patent No. 162, 1935; 'Queen Gertrude Anne Windsor'); every share of the nation's roses as its source gave it, dated and in the past tense; who did the work (budders at two to three thousand bushes a day in 1995; the Rose Garden nomination's statement that the festival and garden were intended for Tyler's white society and tourists until desegregation in the 1960s); the freezes from 1983; processing today; the titles Tyler has gone by.
- [Garden](https://roses-bice.vercel.app/garden): the Municipal Rose Garden: the 1938 WPA project (the city's $181,255 federal grant for the park and garden project, which the National Register nomination ties to the whole 81-acre park), "a rose garden without roses" from 1942, Henry Thompson, Bob Shelton and the soil, the opening on June 16, 1952, the 1912 courthouse fountains, its bush counts from 1940 to 2026 and its acreage by who measured, the Heritage Rose Garden, the National Register listing (2019). Free, dawn to dark as listed on 2026-09-29.
- [Festival](https://roses-bice.vercel.app/festival): the 93rd Texas Rose Festival, October 15 to 18, 2026; the Rose Parade at 9 a.m. on Saturday, October 17 from Front Street and Glenwood Boulevard to Rose Stadium. The first festival, October 11 and 12, 1933 (budget $1,800 in the Rose Garden nomination, $1,500 raised in the Handbook of Texas), the years between, and how Viva La Rosa began, in its organizers' words. The page works out days to opening, now, or ended from the date, and does not report how the festival went.
- [Queens](https://roses-bice.vercel.app/queens): the Rose Queens from 1933 to 2026, 88 names with year and title, both spellings where the lists differ, and the sources for each; no festival 1942 to 1946; the 2020 queen reigned in 2021.
- [Picture credits](https://roses-bice.vercel.app/credits): the 15 catalog pages, postcards and photographs on the site, each with its maker, holder, credit line and rights statement word for word.
- [Viva La Rosa](https://roses-bice.vercel.app/viva-la-rosa) and [en español](https://roses-bice.vercel.app/es/viva-la-rosa): a quinceañera float in the Rose Parade since 2022.
- [Chart](https://roses-bice.vercel.app/chart): two figures, not one series, drawn as two squares of a hundred cells with a table: more than half of the nation's rose bushes were grown within ten miles of Tyler by the 1940s (past tense only), and fewer than 50 Texas growers produced 16 to 20 percent of the U.S. crop by the early 1990s. No figure for the years between.
- [Sources and method](https://roses-bice.vercel.app/sources): every source, every fact, how they were checked, and what the site will not say.

The six plates are engravings generated for the site (a bloom, a cane in bud, a rose bed in plan, a garland, a bouquet, a pressed sprig); they show roses in general, not Tyler's. The photographs and printed pieces come from the Internet Archive (USDA National Agricultural Library), the Library of Congress, the Boston Public Library, Wikimedia Commons and Flickr; captions say only what each record supports (the 2014 Highsmith photographs show the Rose Garden in May, not the festival).

## Facts used, by page
- home: peach-orchards-wiped-out-roses-begin, rose-capital-of-america-rose-city, first-recorded-rose-sale-1879, first-rose-train-carload-1917, first-rose-festival-1933, half-nations-roses-1940s, rose-garden-opened-1952, rose-growers-early-1990s, tyler-no-longer-grows-half-nations-roses, rose-festival-2026-theme-president, rose-festival-2026-dates-events, rose-parade-2026-route, rose-garden-14-acres-free, rose-garden-bush-counts, viva-la-rosa-began-2022, viva-la-rosa-float
- story: san-jose-scale-peach-blight, stallings-first-single-county-agent-1906, fruit-blight-two-waves-mps, peach-orchards-gone-by-1914-tyler-today, matthew-shamburger-1840s-pine-springs, marker-1870s-mckee-shamburger, shamburger-family-1879-sale-price, bs-shamburger-20000-per-acre-1904, first-rail-carload-eastern-markets-1917, field-grown-1917-hothouse-advantage, irrigation-1924-af-watkins, rose-sales-1927, fifty-varieties-1928, rosemont-nursery-1926-al-thompson, dixie-rose-nursery-formerly-whf, mcclung-bros-annual-sale, nal-tyler-nursery-catalogs, dixie-thirty-years-owners-1937, lang-rose-nurseries-1940, sexton-nurseries-1946, cooperative-rose-growers-1949, talisman-azaleas-1950, chamblee-rose-nursery-1950s-antiques-1990, nix-roses-final-crop, tytex-rose-garden-of-america, breedlove-day-of-triumph-1957, lone-star-packaged-roses-1959, production-1936-six-million, nurserymen-employees-1945, smith-county-80-percent-texas-rose-crop-1945, tyler-250-cars-1950s, rose-acres-1957, growers-late-1950s-21-million-1958, early-1970s-1975-production, almanac-1939-125-nurserymen-17-million, roses-1944-one-third-national-demand, two-thirds-outdoor-roses-1946, growers-early-1960s-350-30-million, rose-growers-early-1990s, mid-1990s-30-nurseries-800-acres, one-fifth-grown-smith-county-2000, rose-capital-titles-1929-1936, rose-garden-of-america-nurseries, city-logo-red-rose, rose-title-sources-disagree, rose-capital-of-america-rose-city, peach-orchards-wiped-out-roses-begin, rose-industry-climate-sandy-loams, peaches-1889-104283-bushels, roses-texas-fruit-palace-1895, elberta-peach-cars-1905, tyler-elbertas-baseball-1912, smith-county-peach-trees-1900-census, million-fruit-trees-lindale-swan-1900, after-blight-farmers-turned-to, mckee-ford-adapted-peach-budding, nurseries-1930-91, major-nurseries-1920s, eighty-families-1930s, rosemont-1928-parcel-post, texas-centennial-rose-1935, queen-gertrude-anne-windsor-rose, brooks-56-understock-1956, tyler-substation-1930s-research, texas-rose-research-foundation-founded, eldon-lyle-rose-doctor, two-year-plants-shipped-fall-cold-storage, shipping-modes-refrigerated-cars-air, eighty-carloads-1928, watkins-1928-rose-grading-committee-jackson-perkins, dixie-grade-chart-claim, half-nations-roses-1940s, dixie-1937-hundreds-employed, three-crops-two-year-cycle, budders-generational-workers, labor-supply-shift-to-processing, sexton-120-workers-valdez, certified-2023-four-million, festival-segregated-until-1960s, wpa-halted-march-21-1942, freezes-1983-three-winters, freeze-dec-1983-8000-bushes, sexton-moved-growing-west-1980s, processing-cold-storage-arizona-california, early-1990s-processing-50-million, cold-storage-34-degrees-co-operative, certified-sexton-2014, six-or-seven-families-processing-2021, processing-share-claims-vary, tyler-no-longer-grows-half-nations-roses
- garden: fairgrounds-bought-1912-herndon, loaned-three-acre-garden-1933, mcfarland-1936-return, henry-thompson-cornell-rosemont, first-live-bushes-rose-show-1938, henry-thompson-lost-1944, plant-list-1940, rose-garden-opened-june-16-1952, bush-counts-1954-1958, second-largest-1960-columbus, southern-living-1967, shelton-1977-36000, bush-count-2000, rose-garden-largest-municipal-2018, senate-resolution-2021, rose-garden-bush-counts, wpa-181255-whole-park-project, rose-garden-nr-acreage-11-7, marker-1975-22-acres, rose-garden-14-acres-free, rose-garden-without-roses, rose-garden-visitors, mcfarland-formula-1938, maxwell-1938-wpa-plan, maxwell-plan-seven-gardens, wpa-approved-oct-22-1938, worlds-largest-claim-1938, wpa-work-began-dec-1-1938, marker-largest-wpa-park-project, rose-garden-land-1912-wpa-1938, fifty-six-dollars-left-1942, azalea-club-270-roses-1942, wpa-halted-march-21-1942, eyesore-postwar, laura-thompson-floats-1947, camellia-test-garden-1958-1967, lyle-doubted-fair-park-clay, bob-shelton-1951-5000, soil-sludge-laundry, living-catalogue-shelton, rose-garden-living-catalog, courthouse-fountains-1953, wagon-yard-fountain, queens-court-fountain-1960s, freeze-dec-1983-8000-bushes, visitor-claims-over-time, heritage-rose-garden, heritage-garden-size-and-storms, test-garden-quarter-acre-aars, later-theme-gardens, garden-center-1992, tyler-rose-museum, rose-garden-national-register-2019-lone-star-2023, nr-listing-ceremony-oct-17-2019, rose-garden-nr-reference-designers, apa-great-public-space-2018, lone-star-legacy-one-of-seven-2023
- festival: first-festival-opened-oct-11-1933, first-parade-1933-petals-from-airplanes, queen-1933-27-princesses, theme-1933-in-search-of-the-rose-queen, loaned-three-acre-garden-1933, senator-connally-1933-luncheon, mcfarland-lecture-oct-12-1933, king-and-queen-1934, rose-festival-renamed-texas-rose-festival-1936, first-live-bushes-rose-show-1938, fairyland-rose-show-1941, festival-cancelled-1942-1946-resumed-1947, laura-thompson-floats-1947, first-queens-tea-rose-garden-1956, winn-morton-designer-1982-2019, attendance-1989-100000, covid-second-cancellation-2020, first-rose-festival-1933, rose-festival-2026-theme-president, rose-festival-2026-dates-events, rose-parade-2026-route, rose-festival-2026-court, ramey-chicago-worlds-fair-1933, ramey-first-festival-president, garden-club-proposal-1932, first-festival-six-weeks-budget, rose-festival-1933-funds-attendance, first-festival-attendance-1933, festival-organizers-named, original-name-conflict, rose-festival-suspended-wwii-postponed-2020, viva-la-rosa-began-2022, viva-tribute-floats-idea, viva-quinceanera-parallel, viva-2022-20-countries, viva-open-to-all-15, viva-2026-immersion-supporters, viva-not-invited, tyler-rose-museum
- viva: viva-la-rosa-began-2022, viva-la-rosa-float, viva-la-rosa-tea-party-2026, rose-parade-2026-route, rose-city-fiesta-2025
- chart: half-nations-roses-1940s, rose-growers-early-1990s, smith-county-80-percent-texas-rose-crop-1945, tyler-no-longer-grows-half-nations-roses
- queens: first-rose-queen-1933, festival-cancelled-1942-1946-resumed-1947, covid-second-cancellation-2020, rose-festival-2026-court

## What this site does not claim
- "Tyler grows half the nation's roses" in the present tense
- That a peach blight "made" Tyler the Rose City (the Handbook of Texas says it led many Tyler-area farmers to grow roses).
- A year for the blight, a single share of the nation's roses, a single official title, a single count of the garden's bushes, who worked the rose fields by race or ethnicity (the sources found do not record it), or how the 93rd festival went.