Fall into tradition with annual festival

The Hopkins County Fall Festival is a time-honored tradition with many activities remaining the same since 1970 and an emphasis on both fun and local agriculture.

The festival celebrated its inaugural run Oct. 2 and 3, 1970 at the former City Park (now Buford Park), according to the Hopkins County Echo. The National Guard Armory, which now sits as a hay barn on a private property, was the site of indoor exhibits, the Echo reported.

“There’s been a lot of changes over the years we were in operation,” said Don Smith, the second chairman of the festival back in 1970.

The main sponsors of the event are still around. The Hopkins County Farm Bureau (now the Hopkins/Rains County Farm Bureau) and the Ag Extension Office (now the Texas A&M Agriculture Extension Office) still play a large role in organizing the festival.

Some events that have been present for all 49 years include the arts and crafts show, hay show, educational booths, dominoes tournament and a childrens’ carnival. The event no longer features a tractor pull, fiddlers contest, pie eating contest or a barn dance, and other events such as a milking contest have migrated to the dairy festival in June.

“We said, ‘we ought to put all these things together and start a county fair,’” Smith said. “We didn’t have near the things that went on, but we had several, and we really didn’t have a place to hold it.”

When the city constructed more modern facilities in 1971, Smith said the committee thought they had “died and gone to heaven.” That same year, the town decided to combine the Hopkins County stew cooking competition into the fall festival, which would be presided over by a panel of “old timers” from all over the county, the Echo reported.

The entries into the stew contest numbered just three ahead of the festival, but by the day of the cook-off, 16 participants had thrown their hats in the ring, the Echo said. A popular stew cook, Lonnie Bigelow, brought a page of the July 1959 American Home magazine in which Hopkins County stew was featured as an “outstanding regional dish.” The winner was Ivo Teer from the Reilly Springs community, according to the Echo.

“I remember it just like it was yesterday,” Smith said.

The history of the Hopkins County stew dates back much before its inclusion in the fall festival, most likely back to the early days of the county itself. Between 1851 and 1882, the first white settlers arrived in the area when settler Zacharias Birdwell was deeded 640 acres of land by the Texas governor in what would one day become Hopkins County, according to local historian June Tuck. With him, he brought his wife Polly.

Over the next 10 years, approximately 10 to 12 more single men arrived. After the death of Zacharias, Polly wrote to her nephew, Willis Stewart, to join the small community. Stewart would later form the Oakland Church, and arrived in 1882 to buy 301 acres of land from his aunt.

As the community continued to grow, the settlers would gather together in the spirit of homecoming, according to Tuck. One meal hearty and filling enough to feed all of them was a large kettle of stew, although opinions differ as to what meat was added. A recipe published by the Hopkins County Stew Contest authored by Minerva Hopkins Smith contains both chicken and beef. Joe Tom Wood, the “all time stew king,” told the Echo in 1971 the stew “must absolutely contain squirrel,” and shared his recipe to feed 150 people.

Throughout the mid-1950s, several county communities had some form of fall festival. North Hopkins held a fall festival on Nov. 17, 1950 that featured fish ponds, grab bags and an evening meal, with the crowning of a high school king and queen, according to the News-Telegram published at the time. Although this event was open to the public, it somewhat more resembled the Halloween carnivals we know of today.

Saltillo had a similar event in 1954, the News-Telegram reported at the time, and Pine Forest and the African American community of Sulphur Springs both held a fall festival in October of 1950. The black community’s event featured “beautiful fall flowers, family booths, a cakewalk and Hallowe’en events,” the News-Telegram reported.

By 1972 the fall festival as we know it today was booming, and stew made by entrants was being sold for 75 cents per bowl or $1 per quart, the Echo reported. The junior livestock show had more than 200 entrants and 14 educational exhibits were erected in the Armory. It was at this time, Smith says Larry Gee of the Chamber of Commerce took over the stew contest while the Ag Extension and the Farm Bureau continued to run the rest of the Fall Festival.

“We raised some money. It wasn’t a whole lot, and we didn’t want to give it a great many cash prizes,” Smith says. However, he recalls sitting with members of the farm bureau with “great big bags of nickels, dimes and quarters” collected from the festival, as admission to various contests was not very expensive.

Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s the event only gained in popularity. A News-Telegram Sulphur Graph from 1981 had preparations for the festival beginning in June, with those who intended to show pigs in fall needed to be registered at that time.

AgriLife Extension Family and Community Health Agent Johanna Hicks, who came to Hopkins County for the first time in 1984, changed the name from the home-making skills contest to the creative arts contest because “a lot of guys wouldn’t enter.” She also added a woodworking division which “really has brought out more male entrants and made it more diversified,” she says.

Although there’s no more pie eating, there is certainly pie making, Hicks says, which takes place during the bake show portion of the creative arts contest. Entrants submit not only pies but also cakes, cookies and candy, and judges rank the sweet entries.

“It’s just a good family fun weekend,” Hicks said. “It’s a good time to come out, do a little shopping, grounds entertainment, do some good eating and just fun stuff that’s family friendly.”

“I’m just glad the farm bureau had the foresight to see something we needed in the county,” Smith said. “I’m proud of what we did… and we had a lot of fun doing it. So many people over the years have volunteered their time and effort to keep it going, and I’m looking forward to another 50 years.”

The Hopkins County Stew Contest will be held this Saturday at Buford Park with stew being served at 10:45 a.m. For more information visit: https://www.ssnewstelegram.com/news/parade-kick-autumn-activities