Pioneer Festival to be held September 24, 25

Huntington’s Forks of the Wabash Pioneer Festival continues its tradition of ushering in fall, this year featuring a new event that both recalls early settlers who carved out clearings in Indiana’s forests and celebrates Huntington University’s 125th anniversary.

The weekend festival will be held September 24 and 25.

Huntington University, long associated with its Foresters mascot, is the major sponsor of the festival’s Timberworks Lumberjack Show. Additional show sponsors are McCune’s Sales and Service, Purviance House Bed and Breakfast, Mike’s Tree Service and Doc’s Woodcarving, all in Huntington.

The Timberworks Lumberjack Show, based in Wisconsin and performing throughout the United States, offers its audiences the chance to experience a nostalgic logging competition of the early 1900s.

Shows will be performed both days of the festival and include such events as axe throwing, underhand or springboard chopping, log rolling, cross cut sawing, a hot saw event and a chainsaw carve.

The event is reminiscent of old-time logging camps in North America, where lumberjacks would challenge each other in head-to-head competitions to put their skills to the test.

Crowd participation is encouraged, and at the end of each performance, one audience member will take home a carving autographed by one of the lumberjacks.

In addition to the professional lumberjacks, four two-person amateur teams will test their skills on Sunday, September 25, at noon. The eight amateur competitors have been selected by the sponsoring organizations.

Show times on Saturday, September 24, are Noon, 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. Shows on Sunday, September 25, are 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., with the amateur contest at noon.

Continuing with the lumberjack theme, Huntington University’s Dr. Bruce Evans will mingle with festival guests in the persona of Indiana’s first forester, Charles Deam. Evans, professor of biology at HU, will roam the festival grounds for several hours each day.

Deam, a Bluffton native, had his interest in botany sparked when as a 16-year-old farm boy in Wells County, he survived the deadly typhoid fever after being given a pioneer remedy using the herb, old-field balsam.

Stressed out by stints as a teacher and druggist, Deam began taking walks, collecting samples of plants and flowers along the way. He studied proper methods to collect, identify and preserve those specimens, expanding to neighboring states and countries but eventually focusing only on Indiana plants.

Deam was named Indiana’s first full-time forester in 1909, documenting Indiana’s attempts to reforest the state and working to preserve the state’s private forests. He left that post in 1928 to focus on plants, eventually accumulating more than 70,000 specimens of Indiana plants at his home in Bluffton. That collection is now housed at Indiana University, Bloomington. Deam died in 1953.

This year’s Pioneer Festival will continue to feature all of its traditional elements, including food, crafts, antiques and a farmers’ market; displays of old-time motorcars, engines and bicycles; a full slate of entertainment and demonstrations and re-enactments of pioneer life.

The festival is held at the Huntington County Fairgrounds, 631 E. Taylor St., Huntington, and the adjacent Hier’s Park. Hours are Saturday, September 24, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday, September 25, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. An old-time worship service will be held Sunday at 9 a.m.

Admission is $3 for adults, $1 for students and no charge for children under 5. Parking is free. Not permitted on the festival grounds are pets, golf carts, bicycles, roller skates, skateboards and smoking.

The Forks of the Wabash Pioneer Festival is sponsored by Phi Chapter of Psi Iota Xi and Friends of the Festival. Proceeds are donated to local organizations working for the betterment of the community. For more Pioneer Festival information, visit pioneerfestival.org.