The Antique Car Rally once had the second weekend in May all to itself but not anymore. It now shares the weekend with another big event called the Syrup City Days Gone By Festival. The Syrup City Festival will feature crafts, demonstrations, antique farm equipment and other items explaining why Cairo came to be known as “Syrup City”.

Cairo has a history of producing Roddenbery sugarcane syrup. This was done by boiling the pure joice of sugarcane and removing the impurities. The result was the amber syrup that made Cairo the second largest cane syrup market in the nation by 1914. It was around this same time that the U. S. Congress authorized the establishment of a sugarcane experiment station that was located at the site now occupied by Bracken Tree Farms.

In 1920, the Georgia-Florida Cane Growers Association was organized during a meeting at the Grady County courthouse. By 1921, there were 2,000 farmers producing approximately 1.5 million gallons of syrup each year in Grady County. That syrup was put into barrels and delivered to local syrup processors and marketers, such as W. B. Roddenbery Co. and W. H. Robinson, and to “mixers” in other cities who produced blend syrups.

Although Grady County farms no longer produce syrup, we’re still known as the “Syrup City”. Dean Foods continues to produce 25 to 30 brands of syrup, including Roddenbery’s Northwoods and Roddenbery’s Cane Patch.

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