Articles Celebrations Obituaries

The huge crowd Saturday at the Apple Festival in Erwin
(Dave Boyd / Johnson City Press)

How do you like them apples

By Jim Wozniak
Erwin Bureau Chief
jwozniak@johnsoncitypress.com

 Printer-friendly version

 Email Article

ERWIN — Official numbers are at least a couple of weeks away, but Unicoi County Chamber of Commerce leaders said Monday that they believe attendance at the Apple Festival Friday and Saturday was the highest ever.

If the estimated tally is confirmed when the Chamber uses a formula to tabulate the attendance, it would be the latest milestone for the 32-year-old festival, which crossed the 100,000 attendance barrier in 2006.

Tim Lingerfelt, president of the Chamber, which oversees the event, thought the state of the economy might have helped the festival.

“People are not traveling as far to go to different events,” he said.

Amanda Delp, executive director of the Chamber, which oversees the event, believes new types of advertising and promotion helped make the event more of a success this year. They included posting information on Facebook and MySpace and advertising on the Tennessee Department of Tourism Web site, which has a news bureau.

“If you send in press releases to the Tennessee News Bureau, then they send it out to hundreds and hundreds of media outlets,” she said. “So we made sure that all of our press releases went to the Tennessee News Bureau as well. We increased the number of press kits that we sent out this year.”

The Chamber also advertised with the Johnson City Press.

Mother Nature helped, especially on Saturday.

“I think the fact that the weather was perfect led to probably the record number,” Delp said.

She said the crowd was strong early on Friday, resembling what Saturday normally is, before tailing off in the afternoon when it appeared the rain was coming. Then came Saturday’s huge turnout.

“You couldn’t find a break in the crowd from about 10:30 (a.m.) until 6,” Delp said.

Lingerfelt heard sheriff’s deputies talking on public safety radios about traffic being backed up to the area near the Erwin National Fish Hatchery, a distance of about two miles from the festival.

This year’s version of the festival featured two additional stages, one dedicated almost exclusively to bluegrass and the other to children’s entertainment. The festival also contained the traditional stage devoted to gospel music and a fourth stage for announcements and a mixture of other entertainment, such as cloggers.

“I think the other two stages helped,” Lingerfelt said. “I think a lot of the parents came to see the kids in the drama club (perform for children). And we had to add chairs for the dancing stage. There were more people than we were expecting for it.”

Delp and Lingerfelt felt good about the results of the bluegrass stage, and he thinks there is a hunger for a venue with this style of music.

Lingerfelt said Lori Wright, the drama teacher at Unicoi County High School, who was in charge of the children’s stage, was pleased with the outcome.

“I was just overjoyed with that,” Delp said. “I took my little girl up there, and she saw two different performances. And she enjoyed it.”

According to Lingerfelt and Delp, the food and craft vendors fared quite well, but the shirt and hat salesmen were not as fortunate.

Delp said the Chamber plans to bring back the four stages next year.

“Maybe, if we get optimistic, I’d like to do another one,” she said.

Something new this year was a temporary tattoo children could receive that would list their parents’ cell phone number. Lingerfelt said there was one case of a child who got separated from his parents and was found by a police officer. Using the tattoo, the officer called the parents who immediately called to retrieve the child.