Festival has roots in downtown commerce, community involvement

It all started in 1991 when the founders of Center Stage Cheshire County wanted to revive downtown Keene.

Center Stage is an organization committed to creating community wide events and programs that improve the excitement factor of the downtown atmosphere.

Originally referred to as the Harvest Festival, The Keene Pumpkin Festival yielded 600 pumpkins in its first year. According to Suzanne Woodward, Center Stage event coordinator and director of the Pumpkin Festival, the event was initially much smaller and more community oriented.

"As the years went on people from further and further away heard of it and started coming," said Woodward. She also said the festival's success put Keene on the map.

The bigger the event became, the more vendors and crafters set up camp at the festival. This year more rides were provided for kids such as an inflatable tiger slide, and a bounce house provided by the Fisher Cats.

Local vendors sometimes set up booths at the festival to raise funds for certain expenses. The Walpole Village School set up a chilidog stand for the first time to raise money because the school had to move its preschool, according to Jennifer Mayes who volunteered at the stand.

Over the years many people planned to have their family reunions and other celebrations to coincide with Pumpkin Festival weekend. It provides a perfect time for events such as Keene State College's homecoming.

According to Woodward, the first year the coordinators put the pumpkins on a gazebo. As the years went on they used the staging. Three scaffold towers were used last year in the event and were covered in pumpkins.

The KSC Dance Team has been dancing at the festival for about seven years according to senior Vanessa Ciarleglio, a Dance Team member. The team has always performed a "sneak peek" of its Midnight Madness dance, except for last year. In 2006 the team members dressed as zombies and danced to Michael Jackson's "Thriller," but reverted back to the Midnight Madness preview this year.

The dancers perform at the festival to entertain the crowd and to raise funds to support their team.

The second year of the festival, Keene set the Guinness World Record for most jack-o'-lanterns lit in one place with 1,628 pumpkins. Since then the festival has broken its own record seven times by a large margin on nearly every occasion.

In 2005 a flood washed through Keene, diminishing the growing number of jack-o'-lanterns sizably.

Senior Kate Lesniewski recalled the small number of festival-goers that year and how the quantity of pumpkins declined by a large amount. Rainy days have put a damper on the event attendance numbers as well over the years.

Ciarleglio also recalled a good amount of pumpkins were ruined by the flood waters. "It was a lot bigger when I went my freshman year," she said.

Keene's last record was set in 2003 with 28,952 jack-o-lanterns. Woodward said no one has come close to Keene's record since last year. In 2006 Keene had 24,682 lit pumpkins while Boston, Mass. slid ahead with about 30,000.

The Boston Pumpkin Festival started in 2003 and was sponsored by clothing line Life is good. The Boston festival was intended to break the record previously held by Keene.

Now sponsored by MarketBasket, the Boston festival raises money in support of Camp Sunshine, a camp program for children with life threatening diseases, according to the Boston festival's Web site..

One tradition that occurs nearly every year are uniquely executed marriage proposals.

Always keep an eye open for them while walking amongst the many orange gourds lining Main Street. Woodward said they usually are written in the jack-o'-lanterns on the towers.