History and a Fall Festival

My shop is on Jefferson Avenue (in Moundsville, WV). Jefferson is the main business district in our small town of around 10,000 people. It's also a street full of history, starting in 250 BC. Give or take a year.

What is this, you ask? It's a burial mound. Yes, you heard me right. It's the Grave Creek Burial Mound, built by the Adenas waaaaaay back in the day. This old postcard shows it had become a tourist attraction in the 1800's, and still is today. When you drive by it every day, you kind of forget how special it is. But every once in a while, I will just stop and look at it in amazement. You can read more about it.here.

In a bit more recent time, still on Jefferson Avenue, the West Virginia Penitentiary was built... in 1866.

If you were just driving by, you might at first think it is a castle. But a closer look would reveal the bars on all the windows. The prison closed in 1995, and is now a tourist attraction. Thousands of people come throughout the year for the daytime tours of the prison, and the night time ghost hunts. Interested? Read more here.

Moving up in history just a bit more, we come to last Saturday, September 20. 2014. Besides the Grave Creek Mound, and the former WV Penitentiary, Jefferson Avenue also features the main business district in Moundsville, and last Saturday, it featured the Fall Festival on the Avenue. The main feature of the festival this year may have been the weather. It was an absolutely beautiful fall day to showcase the 70 craft tables, and the shops, along with food, music, and other attractions. Around 5000 people came out to enjoy the day.

For the first time this year, we reserved the 2 spaces in front of our own shop for ourselves, and sold pumpkins right on the street.

Besides filling the booths, we also had a display on the sidewalk, making it quite full in front of our shop.

It was a very busy day! Quite a few of those 5000 people made their way into both our booth, and our shop. Kevin and Katie manned the outside booth. George and I ran the store. It took all 4 of us to keep up. In fact, we could have used another helper or two. We needed runners with wagons to take pumpkins to customers cars. We sold lots of pumpkins, but we would have sold more if we would have been able to take them to the cars. Something to remember for next year.

By the end of the day, we were all exhausted. And happy that the day had gone so well. Looking forward to next year! 

Fall Festival photos

The Jefferson Avenue Fall Festival went very well, especially for a first time event. The weather was perfect, and I'm sure that helped bring out the crowds. We were busy in the store all day.

I didn't get too many pictures, but here's what I had out front on the sidewalk........

How about those warty pumpkins! Kevin grew those in his garden. Click on the picture to see them better.

Why is there a cooler sitting in the display you ask? It had fresh eggs in it from our chickens!

After I took this photo, I looked up to see my sister Jo posing outside the door with the slate I painted. Clearly, by reading it you can tell I had her in mind when I painted it. She on the other hand thought it referred to me.....



If you can't read it, it says...........

If you think I'm a Witch, you should meet my Sister!

x Wicked Witch of the East

Yep, yep, that's talking about her.

Oh, by the way...thanks for helping me out yesterday Jo!
Love you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!