This Saturday, Sept. 7, Duck Hill will host its 42nd Annual Bogue Creek Festival. The festival started in 1982 by a local Duck Hill resident club known as the Busy Bees. The festival was named after the Little Bogue Creek, a stretch of stream which runs perpendicular to Highway 404 in the Duck Hill/ Montgomery County area. Little Bogue Creek, as well as the larger Batupan Bogue stream in the Grenada County area are both tributaries of the Yalobusha River.
Despite the fading of the original founding community group, the Busy Bees, the Bogue Creek Festival is still going strong to this day. In recent years the mantle of Bogue Creek Festival planning has been taken up by community organizers of the Red Hill Volunteer Fire Department. Due to a vested community interest in establishing a fire department in the Red Hill area, the community has decided to contribute any vendor or sponsor proceeds of the festival to the founding of said Volunteer Fire Department.
This year the festival boasts a rather large variety of attractions and activities for all ages. One new attraction this year will be the Crossroad Cruisers car show which will be set up in the field behind the food vending trucks. In addition to ample food and snack choices reminiscent of county fairs, the event will host similarly reminiscent fun filled games and kid friendly activities such as bouncy houses, a dunking booth, face painting, and more. In the way of rides, this festival will even offer a few such as train rides, horseback rides, and a mechanical bull. One of the longest standing and most anticipated attractions of the festival is the list of vendors who set up each year in the Duck Hill Pecan Grove. This year a massive 77 vendors will be welcomed to the quaint country town for a day of festivities, family, and fun. Planning Committee member Miranda Dean estimates that roughly 10% of vendors on the roster this year are from out-of-state and nearly 75% are out-of-towners from local surrounding areas.
Dean expressed a strong pride in the work of the community to set up this year’s event and graciously thanked the festival’s sponsors and vendors for their contributions. Her final comment on the event was one of anticipation as she stated, “I think it’s going to be one of the best ones so far.”
