The 50th Annual Osborne Heritage Days this weekend will be the final one.
Clayton County Conservation naturalist Abbey Harkrader say the event let people travel back in time to the early pioneers at in the Pioneer Village of Osborne Park south of Elkader. “Our first director for Clayton County Conservation, Don Menken, he was very passionate about history and worked really hard to create the Pioneer Village we have here and wanted to really focus on history and I believe it was his idea,” Harkrader says. “He may have had some help with some of his staff and board members, but they began the event in. 1974.” She says it has been held every year since then, except one during the COVID pandemic.
Harkrader says it has become tough to put on an event of this size. “We’ve just had trouble getting demonstrators and things people to pick up those old crafts from long ago and carry on. The tradition has become really hard, so we need to change with the times, come up with the new event,” she says.
There’s going to be some new fall market-type of festival that will take the place of Heritage Days in the coming years – but Harkrader says what that will look like is still undecided. “That’s up for debate. We’re actually going to have a period after Heritage Days, a couple sessions to kind of get the public’s opinion on what we should transform into. We’ll definitely have something going forward. We just don’t know what kind of fall festival is going to be,” she says.
The final event this weekend will have some 20 demonstrations, including spinning, basketry, soap making, printing press, woodcrafts and candle making. There will also be many pioneer-era foods featured at Heritage Days too, from homemade root beer, kettle corn, fresh baked goods to jerky All the events are free Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Pioneer Village of Osborne Park south of Elkader.
(By Janelle Tucker, LMCH, Manchester)