The Shadow
MONTEREY – The 54th annual Highland Maple Festival will be held two weekends in March in Highland County.
The festival will be held March 10-11 and March 17-18.
The Highland County Chamber of Commerce has released a copy of a history of the festival compiled for the Local Legacies Project, Library of Congress Bicentennial, 1800-2000.
Following is a copy of the history of the popular festival which began in 1958.
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Local folks like to begin the story of the Highland Maple Festival with the mention of a traveling salesman. Back in 1958, Monterey’s local physician, Dr. Thaine E. Billingsley, met a surgical implements salesman from Ohio who wanted to know why Highland County’s maple syrup was so much cheaper than the syrup he bought back home.
The doctor pointed out that there was no market for the product in sparsely populated Highland County. In fact, many farmers gave the syrup away for a lack of buyers.
The salesman’s response was, “What you need here is a maple festival.” He went on to tell the doctor about an annual maple festival held in Chardon, Ohio, which attracted an enormous number of visitors to that area each March. Dr. Billingsley, who happened to be the president of the Highland County Chamber of Commerce that year, was sufficiently impressed by the suggestion of a maple festival that he brought the idea to the attention of the board of directors.
That February, the chamber of commerce decided to stage a small “open house” at a maple sugar camp to test the public’s response. The feeling was that if 300 people attended, it might be worth following up on the idea.
Accordingly, with only a dozen or so press releases mailed to nearby newspapers, radio and TV stations, an open house was held at George Hevener’s sugar camp. It was a miserably cold, gloomy weekend with a light dusting of snow on the ground, but more than 600 people turned up.
The following year the festival was publicized more widely.
Unfortunately spring was late that year, and on the appointed weekend the snow drifts in the sugar camps measured more than three feet and the festival had to be cancelled. Disappointed, but determined to maple festival, four Highlanders, Marvin Eagle, Joseph Pritchard, Melvin Puffenbarger, and Dr. Billingsley, took advantage of their own cancelled festival to travel to Chardon, Ohio, and observe their activities.
Unfortunately, the Chardon festival had also been postponed because of the weather, but the four county men were able to talk to officials about their event, visit a maple candy factory, and see much of what was done there.
On the way home they accidentally “stumbled” onto another festival at Meyersdale, Pa., where they learned even more about running a maple festival.
In 1961 three camps were opened to the public – J.R. Varner’s, Puffenbarger’s and Hevener’s. “Clinkers,” taffy-like candy, was served for the first time, and Roanoke’s WDBJ television station aired segments on the festival.
In 1962 the Highland Maple Festival was held over two full
weekends, and Everett Rex- rode of Hightown added his sugar camp to the growing list of camps that welcomed the public to take part in self-guided tours. Over 3,500 visitors attended the festival that year, in spite of heavy snowfall. The following year the weather was better and about 6,500 people
toured the county. Restaurants and school cafeterias served the crowds pancakes and buckwheat cakes smothered in Highland-made maple syrup, and crafters set up stalls around the town of Monterey.
In 1964, festival chairman, Austin Shepherd, crowned the first Maple Queen, Phyllis Hise. Puffenbarger’s Sugar Orchard boosted the production of their maple syrup when they replaced their wood-burning evaporator for one fired by oil. The sugar water ran well that year, and the visitors were estimated to be 14,000 for both weekends.
In 1965 Vance’s Sugar Camp, south of McDowell, demonstrated the open kettle method of producing maple syrup when they opened their doors to the public. Again, snow was a determining factor in the numbers of visitors that year, but the crowd swelled to approximately 10,000 by the second weekend.
The festival was growing.
The Virginia Senate and House of Delegates requested syrup samples. The Chamber of Commerce honored their request and Dick Eagle and Austin Shepherd delivered 140 half-pint containers to Richmond in 1966. The weather was chilly but nice that year, and additional food stands were opened to accommodate the estimated 18,000 visitors.
By the early 1970s, the Highland Maple Festival had attracted the attention of some of Virginia’s state officials. Governor Linwood Holton visited in 1972 and was followed by the attendance of Governor Mills Godwin and Lieutenant Governor John Dalton in 1975. Attorney General Andrew Miller attended in 1976 and U. S. Senator John Warner in 1979.
“Tol ‘able David,” a 90-minute silent movie that was filmed in Highland County in 1921, has become a popular annual attraction since it was first shown at the festival in 1980.
A “maple sugar run” was organized in 1981. The six-mile run over the mountain from Hightown to Monterey was a feature of the festival for the nest three years and made a renewed appearance in 1998.
The Maple Museum, spear-headed by Dr. Thaine Billingsley, was erected on U.S. 220 south of Monterey and dedicated at the 25th festival in 1983. Delegate Emmett Hanger and Senator Frank Nolen were present for the dedication and ribbon cutting by Maple Queen Sherry Whitelaw.
Jay Eagle opened his sugar camp in Doe Hill that year and syrup production was excellent. The crowds swelled to nearly 30,000.
Jim and Lorraine White, owners of Sugar Tree Country Store, opened a sugarhouse in McDowell in 1987. They used the first reverse osmosis machine in the county, thereby saving time in the production of syrup.
Everett Rexrode’s sugar camp installed a wood-fired evaporator in 1989.
Maple syrup connoisseurs say they can taste the difference in how syrup is produced and have their preferences.
A blizzard on the first weekend of the 1993 festival prompted the organizers to add a weekend to the end of the festival so that the civic clubs would still have a chance for their moneymaking projects. The weekends of Maple Festival represent the most lucrative fund-raising opportunities most churches, athletic clubs, and civic organizations in Highland County benefit from in an entire year.
Two nearly perfect weekends created one of the best years in the festival’s history in 1995. The weather is as critical to the production of maple syrup as it is to the success of a maple festival. Trees are usually tapped by mid February and closed by late March. The sap, or “sugar water,” as it is called in Highland County begins to “run” when the temperature fluctuates between nighttime temperatures that drop below freezing and afternoon thaws.
Highland County’s mountainous terrain (the county has the highest mean elevation east of the Mississippi River) contributes to a late-winter and early-spring weather pattern that can generate warm, sunny afternoons and crisp, freezing nights. Once the sap begins to run, the only thing that will stop it is a change in the weather.
If nature cooperates, gallons of syrup can be made in a very short time. ]
However, maple syrup production is both time-consuming and labor intensive. In the earlier days of maple syrup making, local farmers collected the sugar water in hollowed out logs with spiles hand-carved from elder or sumac.
When the Heveners opened their sugar camp for the first maple festival, they were still collecting the sugar water in galvanized buckets hooked onto metal spiles. These were subsequently emptied into barrels and taken to a sugarhouse. The water was boiled in large kettles over wood burning fires, then skimmed and strained before being sealed in containers.
Evaporator pans, which have a greater surface to allow steam to evaporate, replaced the open kettle method of making maple syrup. Better yet, these large pans can be heated with less wood.
Oil-fired evaporators reduced the labor even further.
Today the use of plastic tubing has replaced many of the buckets. This makes collecting sap much easier.
Puffenbarger’s Sugar Camp introduced the vacuum system in 1976, which increased flow and yield of sap, or sugar water, through the plastic lines.
Today entire stands of maple sugar trees are tapped by using the plastic tubing system. Sap flows through miles of this tubing into a central container. The contents of the containers either flow directly into the sugarhouse or are pumped into tanks and trucked.
Visitors to the Highland County Maple Festival can observe the entire process-from the collection of sugar water to the production of maple syrup.
Mike Puffenbarger became the latest commercial maple syrup producer in Highland County when he opened his camp, Southernmost Maple Products, to the public for the 1999 festival. Puffenbarger has the only piggyback evaporator in the County.
The Highland County Chamber of Commerce has been the sole sponsor of the event from the beginning. Originally it was hoped that the Maple Festival would stimulate business in the local hotel, motel and restaurants but within the first few years, the increase in the number of visitors attending the Festival necessitated opening eating facilities in the county schools and Ruritan Clubs.
Forty-two years later, tens of thousands of visitors enjoy a breakfast of pancakes and/or buckwheat cakes smothered in Highland produced maple syrup, accompanied by homemade sausage, biscuits, and sausage gravy. This hearty fare is served by the local restaurants, the Highland Elementary and High schools, and the Ruritan Clubs in Blue Grass, McDowell and Bolar during the festival.
The Blue Grass Ruritan Club sponsors the annual Maple Queen Ball on the weekend preceding the Maple Festival, and the Stonewall Ruritan Club of McDowell hosts the Sugar Shake-Up Dance and the Festival Fling Dance on the two consecutive weekends. Local cloggers and line dancers perform for the crowds, and church groups, civic and athletic clubs, fire departments and auxiliaries sell foods that range from maple-flavored donuts, funnel cakes, barbecued chicken, and apple dumplings to locally-farmed fresh trout.
Today the juried craft show represents more than 130 artists and craftsmen from nearly a dozen states.
The Blue Grass Ruritans and the Stonewall Ruritans from McDowell each sponsor a dance on consecutive Saturday nights during the festival.
In 1998, the Highland County Chamber of Commerce, in recognition of the high cost of producing and promoting the Maple Festival, began charging an admission fee. For the price of $1 a maple leaf-shaped key chain serves as an admission ticket to four days of unlimited access to craft shows and entertainment.
Although this decision proved to be controversial among the Highland County old-timers, who took pride in the fact that the Maple Festival had been hosted free of charge for 40 years, both the key chain souvenir and the bargain price of admission delighted visitors. Today most
local residents recognize that the admission price generates revenue that makes it possible for the chamber of commerce to further promote both the Maple Festival and the county’s growing tourism industry.
The Maple Festival draws crowds close to 60,000 to a county with a population of less than 2,600. Highland County is one of the least populated counties east of the Mississippi River.
The Highland Maple Festival has become as important to Highland County’s cultural heritage as it has to the survival of the area’s maple sugar industry.
For information on the upcoming 54th festival, visit www.highlandcounty.org.
