One of the best Wisconsin Food Festivals – the Sun Prairie Sweet Corn Festival – started with humble roots! The inaugural ‘Corn Fest’ was held in 1953, which makes it the oldest sweet corn festival in Wisconsin. Over one weekend, around 6,000 visitors consumed more than 13,000 ears of corn and two hundred pounds of butter. The festival moved to Angell Park's spacious grounds in 1955, the third year of the festival.
The 1957 corn festival committee assignments included eight committees: dance, corn, butter, queen, concessions, corn sales, rides, and advertising. While the first festival set the format for future festivals, corn and music remains consistent. Throughout the years, various activities have included a parade, corn eating contest, fireworks, Corn King & Queen’s were crowned, Bingo, Corn Boiler Run, craft & car shows, corn hole tournament, and a carnival/midway. Each year is different. In 2020, due to Covid-19, the festival was completely drive-through.
What hasn’t changed is that Corn Fest is the largest Sun Prairie event of the year and sweet corn remains the star! Stokely USA, provided the corn, cooking equipment and labor until 1997. At that time, Stokely operations changed so the solution was to construct a new "community owned" corn cooking building. The community rallied to protect the future of the festivals time-honored tradition by donating material, labor and financial support for today’s corn steaming facility. Approximately 80 tons of sweet corn is sold each year! A team of dedicated volunteers cook and drive the HOT CORN to the grounds. Customers purchase a ‘corn tote’ which is filled with 10-12 cobs of corn. The customer shucks the cobs and then “butter kids’ roll the ears in Wisconsin butter. The customer can then stop at the ‘salt tree’ to shake and salt the corn to their liking.
Today, the Sun Prairie Chamber of Commerce ‘owns’ Corn Fest with ‘volunteer labor’ in exchange to financial support for several service clubs and non-profit organizations; this funding supports special projects, operating funds and year-round community programing.
Corn Fest schedules, local lodging options, sponsors and more can all be found on www.sunprairiecornfest.com
