Ground was broken in November 1879 for the S.H. Watson Canning Company, beginning Vinton's identity as the "Corn Canning Capital of the World." Vinton's canning industry eventually became the largest in the Midwest, and a festival grew naturally around the area's leading industry. Although its exact origin is uncertain, it began as a small Labor Day observance in 1929, when local schoolchildren paraded through the streets carrying stalks of corn and were rewarded with the rest of the day off for picnics and fun. For thirty years, that tradition continued with large parades, music concerts, and plenty of sweet corn celebrating the harvest and the end of summer. When the canning operation closed in 1959, the Vinton Sweet Corn Day Festival ended.