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Beverly Calvert spoofs Minnie Pearl during 1999 Festival
Beverly Calvert spoofs Minnie Pearl during "Grandest Ole Opry" at the Jacksonian Days Festival, April 1999. Photo: Robert B. Pitchford III

Jacksonian Days Festival, Scottsville

Featuring Allen County history, musical talent, arts and crafts and other entertainment, Jacksonian Days Festival is the largest celebration in Scottsville and Allen County, Kentucky. The two-day weekend Festival will celebrate its nineteenth year in 2000. Conceived by the Scottsville Women's Club as a community festival day, it takes place on the Scottsville Public Square at the site of the old Jacksonian Hotel, presently the site of the Scottsville Public Library. The Jacksonian Hotel housed many oil field workers and tourists that flooded Allen County after the discovery of a large shallow oil field in the 1920s. The Jacksonian, rebuilt in the late 1920s, was home to many local businesses as well as lodging for temporary oil field workers, and boasted one of the finest dining rooms in the mid-South. The Jacksonian was closed in the 1970s, but, for the locals, its name remains synonymous with good food, travel and good times. Thus was chosen the name -- Jacksonian Days -- for the first county-wide festival in Allen County.

Jacksonian Days activities include a 5K cross-country run, an arts and crafts show, a children's carnival and a food court. Proceeds from the Festival go to fund the Scottsville Women's Club's various community service projects. In 1990, the Women's Club was joined in its sponsorship of the Festival by the Scottsville Allen-County Chamber of Commerce. Events added in 1990 were a Fiddlers and Bluegrass Jamboree and the initiation of a local musical variety spoof, the "Grandest Ole Opry." With the exception of high school graduations, the Grandest Ole Opry attracts the largest crowd of any Allen County event.

With the 2000 Jacksonian Days, a new date -- Memorial Day weekend -- will become home to the festival. The 2000 event will add new activities: an open horse show; a one-mile fitness walk; a preschool "Tot Trot"; a "Cruise-In" car, truck and bike show; Allen County Historical Society heritage crafts demonstrations and historical re-enactments; a quilt show; an open-air concert featuring local gospel, bluegrass and country music; and an expanded children's carnival, arts and crafts show and food court.

Project is documented with six pages of text, several brochures for Jacksonian Days 2000, and 8 x 10 color and black-and-white photographs.

Originally submitted by: Ed Whitfield, Representative (1st District).



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The Local Legacies project provides a "snapshot" of American Culture as it was expressed in spring of 2000. Consequently, it is not being updated with new or revised information with the exception of "Related Website" links.

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