Rainy weather didn’t keep parade and festival lovers away from downtown Clarkesville on Saturday. Several hundred people turned out to watch the 56th Annual Mountain Laurel Parade pass through town. Many of them stayed to enjoy the unique shopping and festival-fun atmosphere of Clarkesville’s biggest annual event.
Homespun fun
This year’s parade theme was “Happy Birthday Habersham – 200 Years Strong” in celebration of the county’s bicentennial year. The Rev. Terry Rice served as this year’s Grand Marshal.
The Habersham Central High School Band of Blue marching band provided the perfect soundtrack for the hometown parade. The HCHS Drill Team added a patriotic flair with their red, white, and blue flags.
There were a few themed floats. Clarkesville Baptist was one of several sporting birthday ‘cakes’ and well wishes for Habersham County. The county turns 200 years old on Dec. 15th. The parade was one of several local tie-ins into the county-wide, year-long celebration.
The Clarkesville Lions Club sponsors the Mountain Laurel Parade.
“We’ve been doing this for 56 years,” says Lions Club member Beatrice York. “It started out here with little bitty wagons being pulled and now we’ve gone to big trucks, big cars, and a lot of people marching and just glad to be here.”
York has helped organize the parade for the past 25 years. She was glad to see the sun peak through this morning and the rain subside because a lot of work goes into planning and pulling off these events. “It takes the whole town and, really, the whole county,” she says.
It also takes months of planning and preparation.
Julie Poole knows about that. She works for the City of Clarkesville and coordinated the vendors for this year’s Mountain Laurel Festival. “We have so many vendors that came out, even in the rain,” she says. Those vendors brought with them food, arts & crafts, jewelry, and lots of “beautiful stuff,” Poole says. Despite the on-again-off-again rain, they stayed.
Rain and shine
In addition to shopping and eating, festival-goers enjoyed live music performed by local artists.
By mid-afternoon, the sun was bearing down on the Clarkesville Square and the Mountain Laurel Festival ended on schedule at 5 p.m.
The only weather-relate casualty of the day was the Volunteers for Literacy Rubber Duck Derby. The derby was scheduled to take place Saturday afternoon on the Soque River at Pitts Park but was postponed. Organizers say the water was too high for volunteers to safely work in the river during the race.
The VFL Rubber Duck Derby is rescheduled for July 20th at Pitts Park during Clarkesville’s “Red, White and Tunes” concert.
To view more photos of the parade, click here.
