Watermelons have long been a calling card for the City of Hope. The Festival itself dates back to the mid-1920's when the city's Chamber of Commerce staged a one-day Festival each year. The early Watermelon Festivals bear little resemblance to the recent ones. During the 1920's-era festivals, citizens served ice-cold watermelon to passengers on the many trains which stopped in Hope. The festival also featured a "Watermelon Queen" pageant and a large parade. These early festivals brought upwards of 20,000 people in a day to Hope. The end to the first festivals came about 1931 when the city, suffering from the effects of the depression, could no longer accommodate the crowds.

Hope celebrated its centennial in 1975. The event was a rousing success and local residents started thinking about another celebration. Local promoter and newspaper man C.M. "Pod" Rogers organized a new Watermelon Festival in 1977. The success of this first reorganized festival led to the event gaining annual status. Since the 1970's, the festival has continued to grow, attracting approximately 20,000 visitors to Hope over a three-day period.

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Clothesline Fair started in 1951 and has been successful through the efforts of Prairie Grove Lions Club, Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park and Arts Center of the Ozarks, formerly the Council of Ozark Artists and Craftsman.

The arts and crafts idea originated from trips by Fred and Madge McCuistion of Prairie Grove to visit local arts festivals in the Appalachians. They wanted to promote native and local artists and craftsmen and moved their crafts fair around northwest Arkansas for a few years before finding a permanent home in Prairie Grove in 1957. History shows there had been craft fairs at the state park as early as 1953.

Battlefield State Park already held a Labor Day celebration and reunion of Confederate soldiers and their survivors, so it seemed only natural for the Clothesline Fair to also occupy the same weekend. Through the efforts of the Lions Club, Fred and Marge and countless others in Prairie Grove, the Fair was successful from the beginning.

​In 1957, 30 exhibitors presented their crafts and an estimated 7,000 people visited the fair. The number of crafters doubled the next year from 30 to 60.

Square dancing has been going on since around 1958. Most people credit Peggy Parks of Prairie Grove with starting the square-dancing tradition, though she would not take all the credit. Parks was a fourth-grade teacher in Prairie Grove and remembers watching a high school group do the Virginia Reel folk dance. That gave her the idea that her own students could do the same. She taught her fourth graders how to folk dance and they probably were the first group to perform at the Clothesline Fair in 1958.

Over the years, the Fair has added square dance exhibitions and competitions for children. In 2107, the Lions Club decided to name the square dance competition in memory of Parks. It's now called the Peggy Parks Memorial Square Dance Competition.