‘Amazing turnout’ at Heritagefest on Saturday

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

Hundreds of people came in and out of the building and hundreds more checked out some of the vendors and other exhibits in Andres Park on Saturday as the Floyd County Historical Museum hosted Heritagefest.

“It has been absolutely wonderful, we’ve had amazing turnout,” said museum Director Jennifer Thiele, who noted that over 200 people took a tour of the museum in the morning alone. “We could not have asked for a better day.”

The museum celebrates Heritagefest — what had previously been known as “Pioneer Days” — every other year. It’s billed as a day of family fun featuring games, food, educational activities and local products for sale.

Thiele said there seemed to be sentiment among the visitors on Saturday to make the event an annual one.

One of the more popular items in the park was the ice cream floats, and Thiele said that popular activities included the bag races, a cider press — where people could make their own glass of apple cider — and the rope-making.

“The rope-making guys have been working hard all day long,” Thiele said.

She added that that for a few minutes, she was easily the most popular attraction. “I was called upon to distribute the leftover cookies for the cookie-making contest, so for a little while, I was the favorite person out there.”

The Floyd County Museum in Charles City is one of the Midwest’s largest rural county museums, with more than 50,000 artifacts depicting early and recent prairie life, both agricultural and industrial. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places, the museum opened its climate-controlled exhibit area in 1999, featuring historic farm tractors, implements and tools of the last century.

“We are always interested in feedback,” Thiele said. “If there was something this year that people liked, or if they would like to see something new or different in the future, please let us know.”

For those who didn’t get a chance to stop down on Saturday, the museum will be having another free open house on Sept. 4. The museum is also open to the public Wednesdays through Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.