Vaughn’s 271 Pound Melon Is Mississippi’s New Record
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Hal Vaughn’s 271 pound watermelon is the new record for the largest watermelon ever grown in the State of Mississippi. Vaughn pulled the watermelon Thursday and it was weighed Friday morning. The melon will be displayed in front of Sweet Mamas restaurant on Main Street for the remainder of the week.
WATER VALLEY – A new chapter in Water Valley’s rich watermelon heritage was written Friday morning when Hal Vaughn’s Carolina Cross watermelon tipped the scales at 271 pounds for a new Mississippi record. Vaughn’s melon has a girth of 68 inches and is 36 inches long, surpassing the previous state record by 31.5 pounds.
Vaughn pulled the melon Thursday from his patch located behind his house on County Road 436, south of Water Valley. It was weighed Friday morning on state certified scales at Sayle Propane in Water Valley. Locals on hand to witness the weigh-in were Eddie Magee, Tyler Hill, Allen Rogers, Michael Richardson and Brandon Richardson.
“We have said great and big things come from Water Valley. This is another amazing example,” Water Valley Mayor Tommy Reynolds reported after the weigh-in. “Hal Vaughn has made our city proud!”
Vaughn reported that he first spotted this watermelon on the vine on May 27. He pulled it on August 29, giving it 94 days of growing time.
“Some of them can grow up to 130 days,” he reported about the lengthy growing season for the Carolina Cross melons.
Vaughn had hoped to make it until mid-September before pulling the melon, but it had stopped growing. The melon had also outgrown the wooden rack he constructed, a box-like structure that keeps it off the ground and shielded from the sun and predators.
“Next year I am going to build a bigger rack,” he noted.
The previous state record was set by Jerry Vaughn in 2013 with a 239.5 pound melon. Jerry Vaughn pulled that melon on October 3. Jerry Vaughn also had the state record before 2013 with a 217.5 pound melon grown in 2008.
The string of Water Valley’s record-setting watermelons stem from the annual Watermelon Carnival melon contest as competitors first starting entering Carolina Cross melons in 1999. The melons are known for their massive size and are grown across the country for contests. Jerry Vaughn was the first competitor who decided to pull a big melon for the carnival contest, while continuing to nurture other melons that continued to grow long after the carnival weekend in early August.
Hal Vaughn also has the record for the largest watermelon ever entered in the local watermelon carnival contest with a 219.6 pound melon. He set that record at this year’s carnival, marking only the third time a melon topped 200 pounds in the carnival contest.
The current world record watermelon was grown in 2013 by Christopher Kent. His 350-pound Carolina Cross is officially recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the biggest ever.
