After a 37 year run, the town of Washburn will no longer be hosting an annual August Festival.
Instead, volunteer organizers of the longtime summer festival are setting sights on a new community tradition in 2018, the Washburn Harvest Festival, said Jamie McIntosh, a member of the Washburn Rotary Club and organizer of the event.
“It wasn’t what it used to be. It wasn’t focused on the kids anymore,” McIntosh said of the August Festival. The festival also conflicted with a number of other summer events in the region.
After this year’s festival, held Aug. 19-21, McIntosh and other community members started brainstorming new ideas and settled on the Harvest Festival.
“Our town is a farming and logging community, so we decided: Why not go back to our roots?”
McIntosh said the volunteers organizing the Harvest Festival have a range of ideas for multi-age activities revolving around agriculture, forestry and the start of fall.
McIntosh sees the festival as an opportunity to engage high school students and enlist them in helping run the event’s activities. The festival is scheduled for the weekend of Sept. 14-16, coinciding with the start of Washburn High School’s harvest break.
The organizers also have the goal of promoting Washburn as a community.
“We’re really hoping that Washburn will become a destination for families who don’t live in Washburn,” McIntosh said. “We want to make it fun.”
