San Antonio's Rattlesnake Festival Marks 50 Years, But Check the Address Before You Go

The San Antonio Rattlesnake Festival & Run turns 50 this year, and organizers' own event listings can't agree on where to find it. The festival runs Sunday, October 18, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., but while one listing places it back at San Antonio City Park on Main Street, other current sources say it has stayed at the Pasco County Fairgrounds in Dade City, where the event moved after the Thomas Promise Foundation took it over. Anyone planning to go should confirm the address before leaving the house.

The confusion matters because this isn't a small walk-up event. For decades, locals could bike to it. If it's at the fairgrounds, that's roughly 11 miles east on SR 52, and it means planning a drive and parking instead of strolling down Main Street.

How it started

The festival traces back to November 4, 1967, when the San Antonio Junior Chamber of Commerce needed something to replace an aging event called "Fun Day." According to local history accounts, one newly enlisted Jaycee suggested a rattlesnake round-up, reasoning that crowds would come from miles around. Founders Eddie Herrmann and Jack Vogel built it into something tamer and more family-friendly: live rattlesnakes for the adults, gopher tortoises for the kids.

Father Ernest Schultz, a local weatherman at the time, researched which fall weekend had the best historical odds of good weather and helped set the event on the third Saturday of October, a date pattern the festival has largely kept ever since.

The Jaycees gave up their charter in the mid-1970s, and the event nearly ended before a new group, R.A.G.E. (Rattlesnake and Gopher Enthusiasts), picked it up. By the mid-1980s, growing concern over the gopher tortoise, listed as a species of special concern, pushed the festival to retire live tortoise races in favor of the wooden, rope-pulled tortoise races still used today. Live rattlesnake handling gave way to an educational wildlife show format.

A new owner, a new mission

The Rotary Club of San Antonio ran the festival for years before announcing it would step back after staging the event in 2016. The Zephyrhills-based Thomas Promise Foundation took over afterward, and the proceeds now fund meals for food-insecure students across Pasco County rather than funneling back to a local civic club's projects.

The festival itself has stayed close to its roots: live snake and reptile shows, wooden gopher tortoise races, an old-time pioneer village, farm animals, pony rides, live music, a craft vendor village and the Rattlesnake Run road race.

Where it actually is

This is the part that needs sorting out before anyone makes plans. A chamber of commerce listing for October 18, 2026 points to City Park at 12202 Main Street in San Antonio, the festival's original home. Other current listings, including recent accounts of the Thomas Promise Foundation's run of the event, describe it staying at the Pasco County Fairgrounds in Dade City, where it has been held for several years since the Rotary Club stepped away.

Nothing found online settles which one is correct for this particular Sunday. Residents who remember biking down to City Park for the festival should not assume that's still the case. The safest move is to check the Thomas Promise Foundation's own event page or call ahead before driving over, especially with a 50th-anniversary crowd expected.

Whichever lot it lands in, the 50th edition keeps the pieces that have carried this festival for nearly six decades: the wooden tortoises, the snake handlers, the craft booths, and a road race that still shares the festival's name with the town that started it all back in 1967.

For more on what's happening around town, visit San Antonio, FL Community Website or follow us on Facebook. Got a tip or want to compare notes on where this year's festival really is? Join the conversation in our Community Forum, and check out more local events coverage and community stories for everything else happening this fall.

Header photo: State Library and Archives of Florida / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)