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