Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Full Slate Set For Annual Event

It's that time of year again.

The 16th Annual Gurdon Forest Festival will be held this weekend, with the bulk of the festivities held on Main Street Saturday -- all day.

In fact, Main Street will be transformed into a midway of artistic displays, games, rides, food booths, contests, commercial displays and plenty of fun for all comers.

This excitement will be going on with a musical backdrop as the entertainers perform on the main bandstand.

According to Freddie Horne, president of the Community Development and Entertainment Club (CD&E), all 123 booths have been sold out.

The fun officially begins at 7 a.m. Saturday with the annual Rotary Club Pancake Breakfast at the Gurdon Senior Adult Center. While visitors are gorging on the pancakes, those with booths will be getting everything set up.

The parade will travel its usual route, starting at 10 a.m., though the arts and crafts booths open at 8 a.m.

The three-on-three basketball contest begins at 8:30 a.m. on the AP&L parking lot.

Registration for the antique car show starts at 9, while all floats, cars and parade participants get ready at the Gurdon Middle School parking lot.

Once the parade ends, the Brown Family will take center stage at 11, while the log loading contest registers its participants.

The Heaven Bound Trio will perform at 11:30, ending the morning's events.

At noon, the grand opening speeches will be made, along with welcomes, announcements, the introduction of the Forest Festival Royalty, political speeches and the GHS Marching Go-Devil Band.

"Sisters," featuring Ashley Blanton and Holly Stroud, will perform at 12:30 p.m. while the antique cars are being judged at the First State Bank parking lot.

The LeMay Family will sing at 1 p.m. as the logging games commence at Main and Front streets.

Winnie Clark's Country Music Show will hit the bandstand at 1:30, with the Terry Hughes Show following at 2 o'clock. This will be followed by the LeAndra Jester Show at 2:30, the McGinty Family at 3 and the featured performer, Brown Oliver at 3:30.

Once the singing ends, the CD&E's Club Auction will be held, starting at 4 p.m. on the bandstand.

At the auction's conclusion, the Piggly Wiggly Halloween Costume Contest will be judged.

Entertainment resumes at 5:30 p.m. with Danny Kilcrease and Southern Grace, followed by Elizabeth Shepherd at 6, and Jerry Hilton and the Ouachita Riverbottom Band at 6:30.

The Horizon Bank Street Dance, featuring Bruce Webb and the Mountain Dew Band, will close the official festivities at 8.

However, the street cleaning contest, with no entry fee and all entrants getting free trash bags, will be the final competition, bringing Saturday's festivities to an end.

The Forest Festival Air Expo will follow, giving visitors a reason to return Sunday.

The Air Expo starts with a pancake breakfast at 7 a.m. at Lowe Field, where the event will take place.

At noon, there will be glider, helicopter and hot air balloon rides available for the visitors, as the air show displays officially open.

While Cheyenne performs on the bandstand at 1 p.m., the remote control clubs will strut their stuff as they perform aerobatic acts with the model aircraft.

The air show will start at 2 p.m. with a series of acts on tap.

For the first time this year, the Forest Festival will feature a 5-K run.

The festival began as a Centennial celebration for Gurdon in 1980. The reaction, Horne said, was so favorable the community decided to have an annual festival.

The event has grown from a handful of arts and crafts booths to one of the finest and largest small town trade shows in Arkansas.

Attendance, he said, has reached as many as 6,000, with another large crowd (possibly a record one) expected this year.

The show attracts vendors from the Ark-La-Tex region, and has participants from as far away as California.

In fact, special homecomings and class reunions have been planned around the Forest Festival by a number of families and graduating classes.

The festival is a fund raising project for the CD&E Club, a non-profit organization. Funds raised go to support the club's college scholarship fund, send delegates to Boys' State and Girls' State, help the Gurdon school band program, the Gurdon Senior Adult Center, the Close Up program an other community development projects and entertainment.

For information about the festival, call Horne at (501) 353-2588; or Terry Norris at 353-2947 about the car show.