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The original inspiration for the Mountain State Forest Festival was the need to attract people to this beautiful region of West Virginia in the late 1920s.
Elkins was the headquarters for the new Monongahela National Forest, and it was a city with an active business community and the capacity to develop a grand festive event.
Nearly 100 years later, the congressional designation of the Appalachian Forest National Heritage Area acknowledges the idea that economic growth in these mountains depends on a wider concept of tourism and business expansion throughout our mountainous region all year long.
The AFNHA includes 18 counties and nine cities sharing a new strategic plan in the Mon Forest Town Partnership.
These towns work together to improve the health and safety of local citizens and provide a standard for accommodations for visitors. Today the focus may be on more outdoor recreation including everything from trout fishing to mountain biking, but cooking and sleeping in the woods does not suit everyone.
The nine Mon Forest Towns are working to reinvent themselves as they develop and share the AFNHA brand image now. Their downtown experiences include shopping for local arts and crafts, finding delightful little restaurants, listening to music outdoors, and sleeping in modern hotels.
The Forest Festival continues the quaint practice of crowning a queen with the pomp and circumstance of a grand homecoming event. Now fewer and fewer people choose to wear velvets and wools to festive events as the American lifestyle becomes increasingly informal.
Tourists may not be distinguishable from the locals as they work remotely on digital devices while visiting festive activities.
While looking at pictures of the Knights of the South Branch Valley in an old Forest Festival program, I felt a longing for older customs when I realized that I had not seen the horseback riders collecting rings under the square arches for several years.
There are things about yesteryear that we all miss, but I am glad that we have new ways to work together to conserve our forest.
The national forest heritage designation may bring newer ideas for the Forest Festival to emerge from the pandemic with a better sense of what is appropriate in the 21st Century.
It is still important to teach each new generation to find joy in our beautiful forest and learn from the Native Americans who were good stewards of the rivers and trees before our ancestors came to the Appalachian forest.
When we work on water and tree conservation now, we are celebrating the forest that keeps us cooler as the earth warms.