Citrus fairs had been hosted in a number of cities in Southern California since 1879, and there had been an "Orange Show" in
Colton W. W. Brison, who was also president of the Chamber of Commerce, was its president and Ralph E. Swing was its general manager. This iteration of the Orange Show occurred for the first time starting March 6, 1911 in a small tent on the intersection of the downtown 4th and E. Streets, four miles from where the 1889 Orange Show had been held. It rained for four days, The Orange Show returned as the National Orange Show the following year, with a better tent. The National Orange Show continued to be hosted in tents until 1924, when the organizers purchased a plot of land and had a building, 135 feet wide and 900 feet long, this building was in 1927 the "largest permanent exposition building on the Pacific Coast". Since then the National Orange Show has introduced non-citrus-related entertainment and exhibits, and turned into a "true regional fair". On the south end of the fairgrounds, a stadium was built in 1938 to accommodate the increasing number of people attending the Orange Shows. The fairgrounds were repurposed for storage after
Pearl Harbor was bombed in December of 1941; for the next five years, no National Orange Shows were held. After the main building burned down in 1949, the Swing Auditorium was used as a provisional venue. The National Orange Show introduced its mascot, Citrus Sam, in 1958; he was named by a fourth-grade student Larry Pottroff. To appeal to younger fairgoers who were more familiar with the NOS Events Center, the National Orange Show was renamed in 2017 to the NOS Citrus Fair. Due to the
COVID-19 pandemic the Orange Show did not occur in 2020 nor in 2021. ==Rain==