Etowah County Alabama Alabama State Chocolate Festival
One point of naming needs clearing up first. No newspaper account, city announcement or festival listing in the verified record ever called this event the Alabama State Chocolate Festival. The celebration that filled Rainbow Plaza each spring was the Alabama Chocolate Festival, a city-run occasion in Rainbow City built around flowing chocolate fountains, a fiercely contested home-baking competition and an evening headliner concert. The longer wording in the title above is simply how this article was catalogued; everything that follows describes the shorter-named event as Rainbow City knew it.
A second point matters just as much. This is a historical account, because the documented record closes in the spring of 2017. Editions are verified from the seventh annual gathering in 2012 through the twelfth annual in 2017, and no later edition turned up in any source checked. Nothing below promises that the festival still takes place, and no current or future date is offered. What the record preserves is a small city that, for at least six documented springs, organised its biggest social occasion around chocolate.
About the Festival
The Alabama Chocolate Festival belonged to Rainbow City, in Etowah County in north-eastern Alabama. Rainbow City is not the county seat; that role belongs to Gadsden, the larger neighbour whose name appears in several organisations connected with the event. The festival’s home ground was Rainbow Plaza, the shopping centre whose open spaces and vacant shop units gave the celebration both its stage and, in some years, its competition rooms.
The City of Rainbow City organised the festival, and its editions were announced by Mayor Terry John Calhoun, whose name appears across the run of years as the voice of the event. That municipal ownership shaped its character. Rather than a commercial promotion charging at the gate, the documented later editions were free to enter, and the city handed out thousands of chocolate bars. It read like a town treating its residents to a party rather than selling them a ticket.
At the centre of the day stood chocolate in quantity. Editions variously featured a single towering fountain, a five-foot fountain, or, by the final documented year, three fountains at once. Around that centrepiece the city arranged carnival rides, vendors, contests of skill and appetite, and live music building toward a nationally known headliner after dark.
For a useful comparison, see the Escambia County Alabama Taste of the South Festival for another county festival.
Quick Facts
| Item | Detail |
| Event’s own name | Alabama Chocolate Festival |
| Host town | Rainbow City, Alabama |
| County | Etowah County (county seat: Gadsden) |
| Venue | Rainbow Plaza |
| Organiser | City of Rainbow City |
| Earliest edition in the verified record | Seventh Annual, April 14, 2012 |
| Latest edition in the verified record | Twelfth Annual, April 1, 2017 |
| Signature competition | Chocolate Taste-Off, in Cakes, Pies, Candy and Everything Else Chocolate |
| Admission in documented later editions | Free in 2015, 2016 and 2017 |
| Chocolate fountains | Six-foot fountain in 2012; five-foot fountain in 2013 and 2015; three fountains in 2017 |
History
The verified record opens in 2012, mid-story. The edition held on Saturday, April 14 of that year was already billed as the seventh annual, which shows the festival had run for some years beforehand, though this article declines to convert that billing into a founding year, because edition numbering and calendar arithmetic are not documented history. What 2012 does document is scale. Mayor Calhoun reported that about eight thousand people had attended the previous year’s festival, with forty-eight food and arts-and-crafts vendors booked. The city gave away three thousand chocolate bars, and a six-foot chocolate fountain sponsored by the Etowah County Tourism Board anchored the sweets.
The 2013 edition stretched across two days, April 5 and 6. Its fountain stood five feet tall and carried a different sponsor’s name, the Greater Gadsden Tourism Board, recorded here exactly as that year printed it and kept separate from the 2012 board’s name. The Taste-Off ran to a tight timetable: entries received between 10 and 10:30 in the morning, judging from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., winners announced at 4:30 p.m. The headliner was The Return, a Beatles reenactment group, setting the pattern of nostalgia-leaning headline acts.
By the ninth annual edition on April 5, 2014, the carnival opened the night before, on April 4. Orleans headlined at 6:30 p.m., and the Taste-Off’s Best Overall winner took home one hundred dollars. The tenth annual followed on Saturday, April 11, 2015, with free admission, carnival tickets at twenty-two for twenty dollars or one dollar apiece, and Larry Gatlin & The Gatlin Brothers on stage. The five-foot fountain that year ran from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., or until the chocolate was gone.
The last two documented editions kept the formula. The eleventh annual, on Saturday, April 2, 2016, again charged nothing for admission; carnival tickets had edged up to twenty-two for twenty-five dollars, or one dollar twenty-five cents each, and Pam Tillis headlined at 6:30 p.m. The twelfth annual, on Saturday, April 1, 2017, brought back three chocolate fountains and closed the verified record with Collin Raye performing from 6:30 to 8 p.m. After that date, the trail goes quiet. Whether the festival ended, paused or simply stopped being covered, the sources checked do not say.
What to Expect
Because no edition after 2017 is verified, this section describes what the documented festivals offered between 2012 and 2017, and readers should picture those springs, not a hypothetical modern one.
The Chocolate Taste-Off was the competitive heart of the day. Home bakers entered their work in four categories: Cakes, Pies, Candy and Everything Else Chocolate. In 2012 the contest paid fifty dollars for first place, thirty dollars for second and twenty dollars for third in each category, and by 2014 a Best Overall prize of one hundred dollars crowned the field. Judging was no casual affair; the 2013 schedule allowed two full hours between entries closing and the winners’ announcement. In various years the Taste-Off sat inside former shop units at the plaza, occupying at different times the old CVS building, the old Blockbuster building and the old Book Corner location, so the competition literally filled the host centre’s empty storefronts.
Chocolate also arrived as spectacle. The fountains were the visual signature, whether the six-foot cascade of 2012, the five-foot versions of 2013 and 2015 or the trio that returned in 2017. Alongside them ran the Treasure Hunt for the Pot of Gold at the End of Rainbow…City, whose weekly clues in the run-up kept the town guessing; the 2012 Treasure Chest held four thousand two hundred fifteen dollars in value, including two thousand dollars in cash.
The rest of the grounds behaved like a county fair in miniature. A carnival supplied the rides, opening a night early by 2014. An egg toss and a chug-a-lug contest supplied the cheerful indignity every good festival needs. Live music ran through the day from about 12:30 p.m., building toward headliner sets by The Return, Orleans, Larry Gatlin & The Gatlin Brothers, Pam Tillis and Collin Raye.
Planning Your Visit
Honesty has to govern this section. The documented editions belong to the years 2012 through 2017, and no later edition is verified, so there is no confirmed upcoming date to plan around. What can be offered is the shape a visit took during those years.
A festival day began early for competitors and mid-morning for everyone else. The gates opened at 10 a.m. in 2013, and Taste-Off hopefuls had a narrow half-hour window to register entries before judging began. Casual visitors aimed for the middle of the day, when the fountains were running and the afternoon music had started. Admission cost nothing in 2015, 2016 and 2017, so spending went on carnival tickets, vendor food and crafts. Ticket prices moved a little across the years, from twenty-two for twenty dollars in 2015 to twenty-two for twenty-five dollars in 2016, with singles at one dollar and then one dollar twenty-five cents.
The evening belonged to the headliner, whose set typically began at 6:30 p.m., before a crowd the mayor’s office once measured in the thousands.
A Sample Day at the Documented Festival
Working from the timetables of 2013 and 2015, a typical festival day unfolded like this. The morning belonged to the bakers: Taste-Off entries were on the table by half past ten, and the judges settled to their two hours of tasting while the plaza filled.
By late morning the five-foot fountain was flowing; in 2015 it ran from 11 a.m. until 4 p.m. or until the chocolate gave out. Midday brought the contests, and from about half past twelve the live music carried the afternoon.
Late afternoon brought the Taste-Off announcements, made at 4:30 p.m. in 2013, resolving the day’s quiet rivalries into prize money and bragging rights. Then the crowd re-formed around the stage for the headliner at 6:30, and by eight o’clock, when Collin Raye’s 2017 set ended, the documented day was done.
How It Differed From Other Chocolate Festivals
Chocolate festivals are a small national genre, and the Rainbow City event had a distinct personality. Many chocolate celebrations are commercial tasting events, where the chocolate is the merchandise and admission buys samples. The Alabama Chocolate Festival inverted that arrangement in its documented years: entry was free, the fountain was a municipal centrepiece rather than a vendor’s stall, and the city gave chocolate bars away by the thousand.
It also had a distinctly local competitive culture. The Taste-Off’s fourth category, Everything Else Chocolate, is the sort of cheerful catch-all only a homegrown contest invents, and the Treasure Hunt’s punning name tied the promotion to Rainbow City itself rather than to any sponsor’s brand. Keep this event separate, too, from the Mobile Chocolate Festival, a different celebration in a different Alabama city with no connection to Rainbow City’s plaza or its Taste-Off. The two share a state and an ingredient, and nothing else.
Planning Checklist From the Historical Record
Drawn from the documented editions, the practical points were these:
- Arrive before half past ten if entering the Taste-Off, because the entry window was short.
- Head for the chocolate fountain early, since one documented edition ran it only until the chocolate was gone.
- Carry small bills for carnival tickets, sold in bundles of twenty-two or singly.
- Stay through the late-afternoon Taste-Off announcements for the prizes.
- Keep the evening free for the headliner set at 6:30 p.m.
- Check which year any date you find for this festival belongs to before believing it.
- Remember that the last verified edition took place on April 1, 2017.
Beyond the Festival
Rainbow Plaza was the whole world of the festival itself, but a documented visit extended into the communities around it. Rainbow City offered the everyday services of a small Etowah County town, its plaza setting placing the festival among ordinary shops rather than fairground fences. Gadsden, the county seat nearby, supplied the wider frame: its name appeared in the 2013 fountain sponsorship, and the county’s broader stock of restaurants and lodging belonged to that larger neighbour.
The county setting mattered to the festival’s identity too. The 2012 fountain was sponsored by the county tourism board under its own name, a reminder that the event was marketed as a county occasion, not merely a city picnic. That explains how a shopping-centre festival in a small city could draw crowds the mayor counted at eight thousand: it drew on the whole county, and on the country-music audience its headliners commanded across the region.
Why the Festival Matters
The Alabama Chocolate Festival deserves its place in Alabama’s festival history for what it shows about how towns manufacture joy. Rainbow City took an unremarkable asset, a shopping plaza with empty units, and turned it into a stage, a competition hall and a midway. It took an inexpensive ingredient and made it monumental, in fountains measured in feet. And it spent municipal effort, rather than ticket revenue, on the idea that residents deserved a headline concert and a day of contests for free.
The record it left is also a small lesson in how local events survive in memory. It is rich in the details that mattered to participants, prize amounts, entry windows, ticket bundles, and silent on the questions a later reader most wants answered, including how the festival began and whether it ever formally ended. Preserving the documented editions accurately, without inventing a tidy origin or an unearned continuation, is the respect that record is owed.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does this article carry a longer name than the festival itself used?
The wording in the title is a cataloguing form only. Every source in the verified record calls the event the Alabama Chocolate Festival, the name the city, its mayor and its sponsors used throughout the documented years.
What was the Chocolate Taste-Off, and what could entrants win?
It was the festival’s baking competition, judged in four categories covering cakes, pies, candy and a catch-all for everything else made with chocolate. In 2012 each category paid fifty dollars to its winner, thirty for second place and twenty for third, and by 2014 the Best Overall entry received one hundred dollars.
Which performers headlined during the documented years?
The headline acts changed with each edition: The Return, a Beatles reenactment group, in 2013, then Orleans in 2014, Larry Gatlin & The Gatlin Brothers in 2015, Pam Tillis in 2016 and Collin Raye in 2017, generally performing in the early evening.
Has the festival taken place at any point since 2017?
No later edition appears in any source checked. The twelfth annual festival on April 1, 2017 is the last one the record verifies, so claims of more recent editions should be treated as unconfirmed unless a solid source turns up.
What to Expect From the Next Etowah County Alabama Alabama State Chocolate Festival
How often is Etowah County Alabama Alabama State Chocolate Festival held?
Across the verified record the event appeared each spring under annual billing, from the seventh annual edition in 2012 to the twelfth annual in 2017. That rhythm is documented only for those years, and nothing establishes that the pattern continued beyond them.
When is the next Etowah County Alabama Alabama State Chocolate Festival?
No next edition can be given. The most recent festival the record confirms took place on April 1, 2017, and no announcement of a later edition was found, so any future date would be speculation rather than information.
Will the dates change?
That question has no documented answer. The historical editions clustered in early April, but with no verified edition after 2017 there is no announced date to move, confirm or compare, and readers should rely only on a future announcement from the city itself.
The Alabama Chocolate Festival, as the record preserves it, was six documented springs of fountains, prize cakes and free concerts in a Rainbow City shopping plaza. If the city ever revives it, the blueprint sits in its own history, down to the last carnival ticket bundle. Until a new edition is genuinely announced, the honest place for this festival is where this article has kept it: fondly remembered, carefully dated, and firmly in the past tense.
