Dobby’s Frontier Town hosted its Fall Festival, seeing a huge turnout of people to the annual fundraiser event that helps support Dobby’s.
Dobby’s Board President Lori White said the event was a major success, seeing one of the largest turnouts they have seen.
“It went very well,” said White. “We figured roughly about 5,000 visitors this time. We did, financially, better than we’ve ever done. Attendance-wise, we did better than we’ve ever done. We had 14 craft vendors, besides food vendors, so we did really well.”
This year Cowboy Poet Jake Riley gave presentations on Saturday and Sunday, sharing, from memory, poems he had written, and inspiring others to take up the craft.
“I think everybody really enjoyed Jake,” White said. “He’s just a very, very nice young man. I couldn’t believe his memory!”
Cassandra Dean also taught about pioneer life in the school at the Fall Festival. White said she is interested in coming back next year because she had so much fun.
The Fall Festival at Dobby’s Frontier Town helps Dobby’s keep history alive in Alliance, White explained, as they raise money to pay bills associated with keeping the Frontier Town open to the public.
“It is our fundraiser for the year,” said White. “We only have one, and it’s the Fall Festival. We always try to raise enough money that we can cover our utilities on the main house for the winter. We did that, plus a little extra to start next spring, so we’re very happy.”
One of the new features at the Fall Festival this year was the newly-built livery stable. White hopes that next year, they will have completed the construction and features on the inside of the stable in time for next year’s Fall Festival.
“Our next project will be to finish the inside of it, now that we’ve got the outside pretty much done,” White said. “We’d like to put a couple stalls in there, and a tack room. So, it’s going to be exciting for what happens next year. Next spring, we’ll hit the ground running, trying to get the inside of the livery done, and then I think our next big project will be to try to get the World War II barracks finished.”
White said hundreds of hours of planning and effort from volunteers go into making the Fall Festival a success. She said she is grateful to all who volunteered and all who donated to help keep Dobby’s going.
