News

Apple Festival crowd said to be a record

By Bill Moss, Published: September 8, 2015

Word on the (very crowded) street this weekend was that the 2015 North Carolina Apple Festival was one of the busiest ever.

“I will tell you we feel like we did right at 300,000 people,” said festival director David Nicholson, calling it a record crowd. “We had a lot of people visit Hendersonville this weekend.”
While the festival has no way to make a hard count of visitors, volunteers do “some light counting” and use a formula that gives an estimate. Nicholson called it a record crowd.
The word from vendors was that this weekend was one of the best for sales, too.
“I spoke yesterday afternoon to a lot of our growers and they said how well they had done,” he said. “The arts and crafts vendors were all talking about what a good group of people we had, how friendly the crowd is.”
The weather broke favorably for the festival, too. Except for some light mist, all four days were clear and temperatures stayed in the 80s. Even though it was cooler than many Labor Day weekends, the only medical emergencies involved people with heat exhaustion.
“We tell people to bring something with them and to stay hydrated,” Nicholson said. “They think it doesn’t apply to them.”
When the King Apple parade ends and the last apple is sold, the Apple Festival Committee has one more job.
“We’ll get together in October and to our review,” he said. “We’ll have our holiday party in November and we take December off. Then we start back in January.”