Sugartown, the oldest permanent settlement in Beauregard parish, has long been regarded as the source of some of Louisiana's best-tasting watermelons. There, 48-year-old farmer Jason Green grows and sells thousands of melons from the Sugartown Watermelon Stand each year.
Sugartown, the oldest permanent settlement in Beauregard Parish, is a tiny community of homes and farms clustered near the intersection of State Highways LA-112 and LA-113, about sixteen miles east of Deridder. The unincorporated community takes its name from nearby Sugar Creek, and has long been regarded as home to some of Louisiana’s best-tasting watermelons.
Local growers believe that watermelons grown in Sugartown taste sweeter than others because of the well-drained, sandy topsoil found in and around Beauregard Parish. Jason Green, the 48-year-old owner of Sugartown Watermelon Stand, said that the soil is “one of the key factors for the area.”
“It’s a real sandy soil that you only find in about a 40-mile diameter around Sugartown,” Green said. “It’s really good soil for growing watermelons.”
This kind of sandy, loamy topsoil isn’t unique to Sugartown. In every corner of Louisiana, there is at least one small, agricultural community with similar topsoil that claims to be the source of Louisiana’s sweetest melons. In Northwest Louisiana, roadside vendors frequently market their watermelons as originating in the Village of Saline, where Louisiana’s oldest annual watermelon festival has been taking place since 1931. In the northeast, Farmerville melons are highly regarded, and that town’s annual watermelon festival dates back to 1964—the same year that growers in Sugartown began planning their own festival, which debuted in 1966. Franklinton launched its watermelon festival in 1985, which has since become the Washington Parish Watermelon Festival.
But only one of Louisiana’s self-proclaimed watermelon capitals is named “Sugartown,” and the marketing boost provided by that name has set Sugartown apart from other watermelon-growing communities for the past hundred years.
The idea that Sugartown produces outstanding watermelons was well-established by the 1930s, when grocery advertisements promoting “Sugartown Watermelons” began turning up in Southwest Louisiana newspapers. In reality, the reputation of Sugartown melons had likely been in place for years before grocery stores began capitalizing on the name in newspaper ads.
As the popularity of Sugartown melons grew during the first half of the twentieth century, the issue of counterfeit Sugartown melons emerged—and it’s been a thorn in the side of Sugartown growers ever since. Counterfeiters became such a problem that growers from Allen and Beauregard Parishes banded together to form the Sugartown Watermelon Association in April, 1964, with a goal of marketing all of the members’ watermelons cooperatively and combating counterfeit melons. The association developed a seal of authenticity, which was placed on genuine Sugartown watermelons, but within months of its first use, counterfeit Sugartown seals began turning up on watermelons from Shreveport to the Gulf.
The issue of phony Sugartown melons was such a well-known problem that politician T.J. Strother, who served in the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1960 until 1968, addressed the spread of counterfeit watermelons in his campaign ads.
“I am told they are using the Sugartown trade name to help sell their foreign watermelons,” Strother wrote in a campaign ad presented as an open letter to Beauregard Parish voters. “We will put an end to this problem.”
But the problem persisted.
“It’s a fact,” one Sugartown resident told a reporter in 1989. “Signs go up saying ‘Sugartown Melons’ when they’re not even ripe here yet.”
Last summer, Sugartown Watermelon Stand owner Jason Green (center) sold three hundred watermelons to NBA legend Scottie Pippen (right).
Green, who has owned the Sugartown Watermelon Stand since 2014—and has worked in the local watermelon fields since 1999—said that decades later, the problem of counterfeit Sugartown watermelons is as much of a nuisance as ever. He blames dishonest watermelon peddlers for using deceitful marketing to sell cheap, early watermelons from Florida and Georgia under the guise of Sugartown melons.
“I have seen people as far away as North Carolina selling watermelons on the side of the road with a sign that says ‘Sugartown Watermelons,’” Green said. “I tell people that the only way you can be assured that you’re getting a genuine Sugartown watermelon is to come to Sugartown.”
And they come. Green said that it can be difficult for both of his stands—he and his wife, Jamie, also own a produce stand in Leesville—to meet the demand for Sugartown melons. Over the course of a summer, the Greens will sell thousands of watermelons to customers from all over the South and as far away as Washington State. Country music star George Jones visited in the 1990s. Just this past summer, Green sold three hundred watermelons to NBA legend Scottie Pippen. Pippen stood in one of Sugartown’s oldest watermelon fields, visiting and talking basketball for an hour before departing for Arkansas in an RV laden with Sugartown melons.
Could all this fuss over a watermelon possibly be justified? Could the watermelon really be that good? In a state where you can’t drive two hours in any direction without passing through a town famous for raising the sweetest watermelons, could Sugartown watermelons genuinely be in a league of their own?
In 1988, the Hammond Daily Star interviewed Sugartown watermelon grower Milford Lacy, who the paper called the “watermelon czar of this part of Beauregard Parish,” about the fervor surrounding Sugartown melons. Lacy, a second-generation grower, was adamant that there was actually nothing special about the watermelons he grew in and around Sugartown. The whole thing, he said, was just good marketing.
“What makes the Sugartown watermelons is the name,” Lacy told the Daily Star. “What I’m telling you is it’s the name and not the watermelon. If our name was Sour Holler or Bitter Creek, we wouldn’t have the reputation we have.”
Kerry Heafner is an associate extension agent with the LSU Ag Center. Heafner said that there is no special variety of watermelon grown only in Sugartown.
“I think the common belief is that there is a watermelon variety called ‘Sugartown,’ but there isn’t,” Heafner said. “I believe that some of the varieties being grown in that area include things like Jubilee, Crimson Sweet, Dixie Queen, and maybe Summer Flavor 720, but I really don’t know for certain.”
It almost doesn’t matter what variety of melons Sugartown farmers grow. What matters is where they grow, how long they are allowed to ripen, and how many of those hours consist of the hot Louisiana sun beating down on their rinds, slowly sweetening the flesh inside.
Jason Green isn’t losing any sleep over the question of whether or not Sugartown watermelons deserve their notoriety. He has no qualms about other regions being proud of their watermelons, but, after twenty-seven years of selling them, he knows that Sugartown watermelons do have something special. It’s not just the name.
“These are the best watermelons anywhere in the world, bar none, and it’s not even close,” Green said. “That’s my true opinion.”
The Sugartown Watermelon Stand is open daily, 9 am to 6 pm, seven days a week during the summer, at 8136 Hwy 112, in Sugartown. They post crop updates to the Sugartown Watermelon Stand Facebook page, which Jamie Green manages.
