It was great to run across the website for the Keene Pumpkin Festival and see so many of the photos that I took over the years on that site. See www.pumpkinfestival.org/index.html.
What a fun event and one that was homegrown in Keene until Boston took it on a couple years . Beginning in the early 90′s the first Keene Pumpkin Festival featured about 600 carved jack-o-lanterns ringed around Central Square, made by the kids at the nearby Keene Middle School. Then someone thought, as Bob Cousey used to say in announcing the Celtics games, “What’s the record in this joint?” So the Keene Pumpkin Festival took on a life of it’s own, eventually becoming the dominant activity of Center Stage Cheshire County. A Guinness Record category was established and in 1992, Keene set the first Guinness World Record at 1,628 lit jack-o’-lanterns. That was just the beginning. The Second record was the following year at 4,817 and the Third in 1994 at 10,540.
It became a phenom! New Englanders poured in to see the event and record after record was set until in 2003, 28,552 set the Eight Guinness World Record as jack-o’-lanterns filled downtown Keene streets in every direction. About that time, Boston picked up the idea and ran with it and took a couple head to head contests with Keene. Talk about David and Goliath. Keene with 25,000 hardy New Hampsherites against Metro Boston. Still a lot of fun and I hope to get there this year when traveling in support of the release of my new book on The Connecticut River by Wesleyan University Press.
Lots of my Keene Pumpkin Festival photos are available right on Main Street and Creative Encounters Store. You can also find them by searching on my website on the Stock/Archive tab.
