The History of Local Fairs and Events 

By: Tuffy Fields

This past weekend I experienced an event I first witnessed 63 years ago, The Farmerville Watermelon Festival. It has grown from a festival that began with two semi-trucks loaded with watermelons drive through town accompanied by political speeches to a festival spanning over a weeklong period with a two-mile parade, over a hundred vendors selling everything from t-shirts and funnel cakes to downtown dances, scavenger hunts and a beauty pageant that can brag that it delivered several miss Louisiana winners. This year the festival can boast about having a three-week exhibit in our local museum. To steal a phrase from a long-ago cigarette commercial, “You’ve come a long way baby”. 

While we sit back and enjoy the fun and excitement of our local festivals we need to reflect about all that our parish has to offer. Union Parish is home to the Corney Creek, Timber, Darbonne Folk, Christmas on the Square, Christmas in the State Park festivals while groups such as the Dutch Oven Group and the DarBonne Diggers have open events on a monthly basis. We are blessed to the point of overload. Rejoice with what our community has to offer but don’t think that festivals and carnivals are a new part of society.