Whence Cometh the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival®?
For the past 91 years, each spring, the valley – indeed, much of the Del Mar VA area – look to Winchester and the Apple Blossom Festival. The 10-day festival period celebrates the beauty and agrarian past of the region – particularly and obviously the apple industry. The Festival is also a focal point of civic pride.
It has certainly not hurt that the “bloom” - as it known locally - is one of the top 10 festivals in the county. It has been written up in Fodor’s travel guides, National Geographic, Southern Living, among many others, and is a travel destination for MARS (a mid-Atlantic travel agency) and other bus tour groups.
The festival also unites citizens in volunteerism. From August to July some 2000 folks participate in shaping the events for the yearly event that covers the last week of April with the parades always the first weekend in May.
Many years of the bloom have had themes. For this year it was “Welcome Home.” As I think back over some 60 years of watching or participating in this monumental creation, I wonder where the years have gone. This is where and how I met many of my friends. Apple Blossom volunteers are a family!
Readers, I think you will find the beginning history fascinating. How did a city and surrounding county with a 1920 population of few than 20,000 bring this festival to fruition?
1924 was a banner year in Winchester! The first festival. The George Washington Hotel opened. The Empire Theatre (later the Capital) at 111 N Cameron Street was showing both stage shows and moving pictures. On what is the walking mall in today’s historic district there was a wide street with 2-way traffic and parking on both sides. A knitting mill opened on North Kent. Grace Lutheran Church built its Sunday school addition. A Brethren (now United
Methodist) Church was built on North Braddock Street, the Winchester Country Club (golf club) had just opened, and John Handley High School held its first graduation (the building began in 1922).
Yes, a banner year for our area and for most of the country. 1923-24 was boom time--growth in industry and agriculture; new technologies in these industries along with new consumer demands and spending. People could buy on credit! And a Model T cost only $300. “Newly developed innovations like radios, phonographs, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, and refrigerators emerged on the market during this period. These new items were expensive, but consumer-purchasing innovations such as store credit and installment plans made them available to a larger segment of the population. (AP History Unit from the Khan Academy, Google search May 14, 2018)
Picture the Shenandoah Valley in 1924--picture nearly 1200 citizens from up and down the valley gathered in Harrisonburg, VA in January. The goal was to advertise the beauty and economic resources on what is now the I-81 corridor. Created that day was Shenandoah Valley Incorporated. The first president of this new venture said each area in the Valley needed to do more to attract tourism and commerce. He asked the Winchester delegation if it would be possible for Winchester to stage a festival to celebrate the apple industry as Winchester’s contribution. Mayor W.W. Glass, along with the rest of the delegation, reportedly replied with no hesitation: “We are 100 percent behind the idea of the festival.”
This Winchester delegation held meetings on April 14 and on April 22, of business, civic and professional citizens. Fascinating, old-fashioned news articles cite admonitions to orchardists to “bring your blossoms to town” and the women of the various churches were given instructions of how they would be in charge of souvenirs. There was a call for cars and drivers as trains from Baltimore and Harrisonburg were bringing visitors to take orchard tours as well as see the parade. It was not can we, but we will! Apparently there much enthusiasm--the newspaper does not say otherwise.
W.A. Ryan (known locally as Dad Ryan of the Winchester Gas Co) was appointed Director General. The Episcopal minister closed the meeting with a benediction (which is still a part of the queen’s coronation these 91 years later): “the bounties of nature are the gifts of God.” (Winchester Independent newspapers, various 1924 articles, January through May, which can be found in the Stewart Bell Jr. Archives of the Handley Regional Library.)
Incredibly in only 11 days after that second April meeting, school officials were ready to hold a program at the fairgrounds of music and dance; and Berryville students erected and danced around a maypole. A parade formed on Cameron St (where it still forms) marched to Piccadilly, down Loudoun, over Cork to Washington Street and out Fairmont Avenue, circling an oval at the Fair Grounds where a grandstand had been erected.
30,000 people had shown up to see bands, firefighting units, floats, decorated vehicles, horses, and apple industry equipment. The parade lasted 45 minutes.
The first queen was crowned with a coronet of apple blossoms in a very traditional British coronation ceremony. Young ballerinas performed an interpretive dance for her.
From this simple dance was born the Pageant--which the older folks of Winchester still remember so fondly. It was a spectacle. Winchester School Superintendent Garland Quarles wrote and directed these pageants with the help of his faculty. Every child participated!! Yes, really!
Most costumes were made from crepe paper and every teacher (and every mother) was expected to help. There exists a letter in the Festival archives from the school to teachers alerting them to when the crepe paper manufacturers would be in town to receive their orders.
Dances were learned in the gym as the winter/spring physical education activity and then moved out on the steps and esplanade of Handley High School as the festival approached. Each year from 1931 to 1981, Quarles had a theme: history, nursery rhymes, dances in pink and green, an apple blossom wedding, the gold ball dance are remembered examples.
I did not even try to calculate how many children were in the Pageant or in the Parades or both over 50 years of Quarles tenure. Thousands, certainly! [And I wonder with SOL tests, and state requirements as they exist now, could we even consider demanding this participation today?]
And, oh, and the first festival ended with a fireworks display! This is still a happy tradition after the Firefighters' Parade.
The request of January 1924 was fulfilled the first weekend in May 1924. Press coverage was from D.C., Baltimore, and other east coast cities. I find this early local history both fascinating and poignant--and a little scary that decisions were made without much citizen input. But it worked. It was another time, but the same place. Whether or not you are from somewhere near Winchester, we all have our bits and pieces of what made us, our lore, and our traditions.
I’m looking forward to year 100!
The festival also unites citizens in volunteerism. From August to July some 2000 folks participate in shaping the events for the yearly event that covers the last week of April with the parades always the first weekend in May.
Many years of the bloom have had themes. For this year it was “Welcome Home.” As I think back over some 60 years of watching or participating in this monumental creation, I wonder where the years have gone. This is where and how I met many of my friends. Apple Blossom volunteers are a family!
Readers, I think you will find the beginning history fascinating. How did a city and surrounding county with a 1920 population of few than 20,000 bring this festival to fruition?
Methodist) Church was built on North Braddock Street, the Winchester Country Club (golf club) had just opened, and John Handley High School held its first graduation (the building began in 1922). Yes, a banner year for our area and for most of the country. 1923-24 was boom time--growth in industry and agriculture; new technologies in these industries along with new consumer demands and spending. People could buy on credit! And a Model T cost only $300. “Newly developed innovations like radios, phonographs, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, and refrigerators emerged on the market during this period. These new items were expensive, but consumer-purchasing innovations such as store credit and installment plans made them available to a larger segment of the population. (AP History Unit from the Khan Academy, Google search May 14, 2018)
Picture the Shenandoah Valley in 1924--picture nearly 1200 citizens from up and down the valley gathered in Harrisonburg, VA in January. The goal was to advertise the beauty and economic resources on what is now the I-81 corridor. Created that day was Shenandoah Valley Incorporated. The first president of this new venture said each area in the Valley needed to do more to attract tourism and commerce. He asked the Winchester delegation if it would be possible for Winchester to stage a festival to celebrate the apple industry as Winchester’s contribution. Mayor W.W. Glass, along with the rest of the delegation, reportedly replied with no hesitation: “We are 100 percent behind the idea of the festival.”
This Winchester delegation held meetings on April 14 and on April 22, of business, civic and professional citizens. Fascinating, old-fashioned news articles cite admonitions to orchardists to “bring your blossoms to town” and the women of the various churches were given instructions of how they would be in charge of souvenirs. There was a call for cars and drivers as trains from Baltimore and Harrisonburg were bringing visitors to take orchard tours as well as see the parade. It was not can we, but we will! Apparently there much enthusiasm--the newspaper does not say otherwise.
W.A. Ryan (known locally as Dad Ryan of the Winchester Gas Co) was appointed Director General. The Episcopal minister closed the meeting with a benediction (which is still a part of the queen’s coronation these 91 years later): “the bounties of nature are the gifts of God.” (Winchester Independent newspapers, various 1924 articles, January through May, which can be found in the Stewart Bell Jr. Archives of the Handley Regional Library.)
30,000 people had shown up to see bands, firefighting units, floats, decorated vehicles, horses, and apple industry equipment. The parade lasted 45 minutes.
The first queen was crowned with a coronet of apple blossoms in a very traditional British coronation ceremony. Young ballerinas performed an interpretive dance for her.
From this simple dance was born the Pageant--which the older folks of Winchester still remember so fondly. It was a spectacle. Winchester School Superintendent Garland Quarles wrote and directed these pageants with the help of his faculty. Every child participated!! Yes, really!
Dances were learned in the gym as the winter/spring physical education activity and then moved out on the steps and esplanade of Handley High School as the festival approached. Each year from 1931 to 1981, Quarles had a theme: history, nursery rhymes, dances in pink and green, an apple blossom wedding, the gold ball dance are remembered examples. I did not even try to calculate how many children were in the Pageant or in the Parades or both over 50 years of Quarles tenure. Thousands, certainly! [And I wonder with SOL tests, and state requirements as they exist now, could we even consider demanding this participation today?]
And, oh, and the first festival ended with a fireworks display! This is still a happy tradition after the Firefighters' Parade.
The request of January 1924 was fulfilled the first weekend in May 1924. Press coverage was from D.C., Baltimore, and other east coast cities. I find this early local history both fascinating and poignant--and a little scary that decisions were made without much citizen input. But it worked. It was another time, but the same place. Whether or not you are from somewhere near Winchester, we all have our bits and pieces of what made us, our lore, and our traditions.
I’m looking forward to year 100!
Savvy Glenne
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