A unique collaboration between three local entities resulted in the recent Gilmer County Heritage Day at Harrison Park festival, with upward of 300 attendees.
“It was a bit of a collaboration,” affirmed Linda Lancaster, director of the Friends of Harrison Park. The Gilmer County Historical Society and Gilmer Arts were also team members sponsoring the event.
“We’ve just been talking about it from time to time, and decided to try it and see what we could come up with,” she noted.
The first-year event follows last year’s “Barniversary” that celebrated the 100-year anniversary of the iconic Pinson barn on the Harrison Park property. Designed as a “passive park” — meaning no ball fields — the 25-acre estate with ample walking trails is on McCutchen Street in Ellijay.
“We wanted to have an ole-timey flavor to that event last year, so we had a few vendors and music and a similar format, but not nearly so focused and not as big as what we did this year,” Lancaster said. “That was the springboard, doing the Barniversary last year.”
“We estimated there were between 250 and 300 people in attendance, including vendors,” she added. “Less than a hundred of those were participants putting on the event, so that would have left another 200 attendees or visitors.”
Lancaster said one vendor, Caleb Arnold of EverWilder Farms, marketed products that were “like a step back in time.”
“They are really into natural elements — they do things with berries, they make ink from a black mushroom and were demonstrating how you could use that, and he had some quill pens that he created,” she described. “His wife weaves baskets from kudzu and all kinds of materials like that. I loved his booth because I thought it captured just what we were going for, which was to give people who didn’t live in those times — particularly the young people who were there — a glimpse of what sort of things were done, and how much was done with natural products in your own home.”
Will there be a second Heritage Days festival in 2025?
“I think we’ll do it,” Lancaster responded. “Our board of directors hasn’t voted on it yet; we usually wait till our December meeting to set our program for the following year. And quite honestly, a lot of it is driven by how many volunteers we have. There are several things we’d like to do in the park, but they all require a number of volunteers, and so we always need to make sure that we’ve got enough volunteer support before we strike out on another event. But we all want to. I did a little survey among the vendors and musicians and food vendors, and so far everyone who’s replied has said, ‘Yes, we really had a good time and would like to do it again.’”