Rappahannock News SperryFest! 2022

SPECIAL PULL-OUT SECTION

, Y A D R 0 S3 U ☞ 3 ES T I T I L I FESTIV SA R E P H T AIDE TO SperryFest 2019. BY RAY BOC

GU

There’s always been something to celebrate in Sperryville HISTORY • A VILLAGE THROWS OUT ITS WELCOME MAT • PAGE S6 SPERRYFEST • RAPPAHANNOCK NEWS • APRIL 21, 2022

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WINERY

E XC E P T ION AL W IN ES, SOU TH E R N H OSP ITALITY

One of Virginia’s Most Awarded Wineries • Rappahannock County’s Oldest Winery CALENDAR OF E V ENTS May 7 & 8 (Mother’s Day) Live Music Bill’s Backyard Barbecue May 28 & 29 (Memorial Day) 2020 Ranger Reserve Release Live Music & Food Trucks June 18 & 19 (Father’s Day) 2021 Cabernet Franc Release Live Music & Food Trucks July 9 & 10 (28th Anniversary) Live Music & 12:00 Winery Tour Talk of the Mountain Seafood

September 3 & 4 (Labor Day) Live Music & Food Trucks

November 25 Holiday Kick-off, Live Music

September 17 & 18 (Fall Fun) Live Music & Food Trucks

Friday, November 25 Saturday, December 31 See the world’s largest cork Christmas display.

October 15 & 16 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon Release Live Music November 6 Wine Library Tasting Reservations Recommended!

December 3 & 4 Christmas Cork & Cheese Event December 11 (1:00-4:00pm) Santa Visits Gray Ghost Free event. Free gifts for kids.

Family owned and operated, a visit to Gray Ghost offers a knowledgeable staff, southern hospitality, beautiful picnic grounds and spacious indoor facilities. Gray Ghost hosts famous events, entertaining tours and the most popular volunteer harvest program in Virginia! Visit the website for updated event information.

OP EN FOR TASTINGS AND SALES:

Fridays, Saturdays & Sundays | 11 am to 5 pm and Federal Holiday Mondays

Please visit the website for seasonal hours. www.grayghostvineyards.com 14706 Lee Hwy, Amissville VA 20106 • 540.937.4869 • grayghostvineyards.com S2

RAPPAHANNOCK NEWS • APRIL 21, 2022 • SPERRYFEST

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a.m.

The Day at a Glance 2 p.m.

FESTIVAL OPENS! → Live music on the Main Stage → Kids Corner: face painting, buy & paint kid’s race ducklings etc. → Sperryville History presented by Rappahannock Historical Society

→ Food from local farms and eateries. → Local wine, beer, cider and spirits! → See the mini car show!

4 p.m.

→ Kids Duck Dash (a painted duck race… learn more bottom left) → Great Rubber Duck Race Down the Mighty Thornton River

TRAFFIC Main Street will be closed to vehicles for a predestrian friendly walkway featuring food, artisans, demonstrations, and live music.

Scan me for more info online

FOR THE KIDS

PARKING

Parents may purchase rubber ducks for only $5 for their little ducklings to paint (using supplied, non-toxic paints) which will then be raced down the river in an exclusive, separate race at 2 p.m. (Launching from the bridge at Happy Camper). Kids will be able to take their painted racing ducks home.

Additionally, kids of all ages can show off their creativity with free chalk art and coloring, there will be ducky games and a festival-wide scramble scavenger hunt!

This year’s kids corner is located in the Stonewall Abbey parking lot.

Please respect our neighborhood and pickup trash

SPERRYFEST • RAPPAHANNOCK NEWS • APRIL 21, 2022

→ Park in Lot D and walk our trail to Main Street (1.3 mi.) → Park in Lot E and walk our trail to Main Street (0.9 mi.) → Limited handicap parking available on Main Street (w/ placard)

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A Racer’s-Eye View to place among other racing ducks I had admired for years.

I returned to the Mighty Thornton River in 2019 and competed in The Great Rubber Duck Race with 1,000 competitors. The day was beautiful, the atmosphere electric, and the crowds wildly enthusiastic. As a racer, I could feel the love and support, which was amplified by the fact we each were competing for a human supporter who bought a raffle ticket with our number. We were dropped off the bridge and we all raced to the best of our ability. I caught a fast current to the finish line with hundreds of supporters yelling and kids blowing duck calls. Even more importantly, I spotted my parents and uncle sticking their heads out from under the forest

By Sebastian

I

fell in love with professional river racing at a very young age. My uncle was a well-known star on the river racing circuit, and my parents and I would fly all over the country to cheer him on. I idolized my uncle. Every time he raced, I held my breath as he leapt past the starting line and made his way through a crowd of competitors. His bright colors made it easy to follow him as he skillfully dodged obstacles like river rocks and tree branches. The finish lines were always exciting and filled with noisy celebrations with everyone cheering their loudest quacks, and me squeaking with pride and joy.

I was determined to follow in my uncle’s webbed footsteps. As a wood duck raised in ponds and lakes and along rivers and streams, my uncle had a natural affinity for water. Most of my childhood was spent in bathtubs and on shower shelves. I remember as a duckling, I “trained” by dodging bath bubbles and racing toward the stream flowing into the tub. I knew my molded immobile feet slowed me down, but I was determined to overcome this challenge.

I begged my parents for a chance to compete, but they were hesitant. They loved and encouraged me, however, U.S. professional duck river racing at the time was dominated by traditional waterfowl like Mallards and Pintails and Gadwalls, who were much bigger and more agile. The general view at the time was that yellow rubber ducks were more suited for Bert and Ernie’s tub than the wilds of a rushing river. I understood their concerns, but I was unwavering.

One day in April of 2018, my parents were off to a waddling, so my uncle flew over to baby-ducking me. The moment my parents took off, he grabbed my racing jersey and told me to follow him. According to my uncle’s goosey friend, a special competition was being held in a small Virginia town that he thought would be perfect for me to test my skills. The race took place on a river called the “Mighty Thornton.” We arrived in this adorable little mountain town and checked it. I pinned my race

‘I have now raced rivers all over the country as a professional racer, but the river race at Sperryville’s SperryFest will always be a special one for me.’

CAROLE PIVARNIK (see her work at Gallery 3 in Sperryville) captured the scene as Sebastian and his fellow racers braved the Mighty Thornton at 2019’s SperryFest. number to my jersey and jumped into the starting bins with 249 other excited ducks that looked just like me. At the appointed time, we were released into the Mighty Thornton to cheers and encouragement of the gathered crowds lining the banks. The race was exhilarating and launched my career into professional river racing.

I entered other races and quickly recognized that river racing did not necessarily require paddling feet and an agile tail. I learned to zip around obstacles and spin out of whirlpools with ease. My smaller stature and buoyant plastic gave me an edge over feathered ducks who often got stuck or simply distracted and flew off. I began

of human legs to watch me place in the top 15 to win a prize for my human.

I have now raced rivers all over the country as a professional racer, but the river race at Sperryville’s SperryFest will always be a special one for me. It’s where I grew confidence in my skills and met lifelong friends, both duck and human.

I take pride in helping the community raise funds through the raffle tickets to build walking trails, sponsor music events and make the community safer.

This year’s race will be an extra special one for me. My uncle, Clarence, will be joining me in the water for the first time.

While my professional racing career is taking off, this will be his last race before flying south to retire.

I hope you will come out and cheer for my uncle, me, and all the other ducks that love Sperryville and love racing the Mighty Thornton. See you on April 30.

The Rappahannock Food Pantry

is happy to celebrate the village of Sperryville and SperryFest.

Good Luck – and May the Best Duck Win!

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RAPPAHANNOCK NEWS • APRIL 21, 2022 • SPERRYFEST!

d Oak Mountain. Open floor plan, windows with a view, and bath, full basement with Rec room and Play room, e plus a handy machine shed/shop.

Sperryfest!

A day of fun, friends, tourism, support of local businesses. and a song or three...

Stop in a Shop… you might find

YOU MIGHT BUY A HOME!

A Million Dollar Baby

76 Rappahannock Farm Homes

It was a lucky April shower It was the most convenient door I found a million dollar baby In the Sperryville Corner Store

76 farm homes catch the morning light With a 110 hillsides right behind There are more than a billion trees Springing up like weeds There are stones of every shape and kind.

The rain continued for an hour I hung around for three or four Around the million dollar baby In the Sperryville Corner Store.

She was selling pizza And when she made those eyes I kept buying pizza Until the crowd got wise.

Incidentally, if you should run into a shower Just step inside my cottage door And meet the million dollar baby From the Sperryville Corner Store.

There are sunny days & big storms in the mountains, too Thundering, thundering all along the chain, mountain cabins and enormous great rooms, too each full moon having its starry sway

Organic farms are placed around the countryside Birds still fly, butterflies and bees are in their hives Music rings across the fields that sway to tunes While we gaze at the ridge so blue There are farms here of every size Farmers who can improvise And friends you can always make anew!

A tune for the joy of Tax Day gone by:

The IRS Blues

All of me, Why not take all of me?

Your 1040 leaves me feeling weary.

Take my dough, I’ll only lose it, Take my home, I’ll just abuse it Baby your Schedule C (and that Form SE) Left me with eyes that weep And I know that I Must grin and bear it.

You took the part That could give me a start So why not…. Take All of Me.

SPERRYFEST • RAPPAHANNOCK NEWS • APRIL 21, 2022

540-675-1373 Kaye Kohler Rick Kohler Jan Makela

291 GAY STREET, WASHINGTON, VA Rick Kohler, Broker since 1975

KohlerRealtors.com JanMakela.com

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1930s

GEORGE ROWE was one of the first people to operate a fruit stand on Lee Highway near Sperryville on the way to Shenandoah National Park.

ARTHUR ROTHSTEIN WPA VIA LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

From the beginning, Sperryville put out a welcome mat for visitors.

In June of 1820, Francis Thornton, Jr., the minister of the Presbyterian Church in the nearby town of Washington, laid out streets and lots in the flat of the Thornton River between Pass Mill and Thornton Gap. Just a year later, the village of Sperryville appears on a regional map for the first time, and among its earliest ventures was an ordinary, a tavern with rooms, serving travelers on the stagecoach route between the Culpeper Courthouse and New Market.

It was the modest start of the tourist business that helps power modern Sperryville. The village’s enterprises always depended on a mix of local and outside customers; it’s the share for each that varied over the years.

For more than a century, Sperryville’s attractions pulled almost entirely from a local audience. Travel on unpaved roads was by foot, on horseback or pulled by horses, and when those modes were replaced by gasoline powered vehicles,

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BY DAPHNE HUTCHINSON

the roads to the village were, at best, single lanes of macadam. It was hard traveling, and there wasn’t much to draw travelers. Rappahannock was the hinterlands, and strangers were mostly passing through.

But for local people, the village was an employment, entertainment and shopping center.

In the 1860s, C.C. Smoot and Sons Tannery opened between the two branches of the Thornton River, offering 50 or more jobs, and by the 1880s, Sperryville had two hotels, four churches, a woolen mill, a saloon, four general stores, seven distillers, a wheelwright and a doctor’s office.

At the turn of the century, a Masonic Hall held lodge meetings upstairs.

Downstairs was a big community room for traveling shows, town business

gatherings and local entertainment. It also served as the village’s movie theater.

There, the pianist from the Episcopal Church kept her hands on the keys and an eye on the screen so she could play the appropriate tune to match the action in the silent films.

Businesses came and went in the little village, which at times in its first century also boasted furniture dealers, a jeweler and watchmaker, a dentist, a saw mill, three music teachers, a locust pin factory and the Dew Drop Inn.

Stony Man Camp brings customers to Sperryville

I

n the 1880s, Jackson Freeman Pollock discovered the treasure of the Blue Ridge’s grandeur

while he was prospecting for copper.

The young man’s Washington, D.C. family owned much land in the area, and the 16-year-old was there to investigate copper mining opportunities for his father. Instead, awed by the wild beauty of the mountains, he built a resort.

Originally called Stony Man Camp (today’s Skyland) and advertised as a dude ranch, it was accessible only by horseback or horse-and-buggy when it opened in 1895, and Pollock catered to an affluent clientele. Meanwhile, he lobbied for creation of a national park to preserve the mountain beauty and resources for the ages The people who lived in those mountains had a rich, unique culture and their own way of talking. Isolated by topography and influenced by tradition, they kept their Elizabethan grammar and pronunciation, the old forms of language. Most of what they needed, they produced themselves.

They were subsistence

RAPPAHANNOCK NEWS • APRIL 21, 2022 • SPERRYFEST

farmers. They hunted until the wildlife disappeared, farmed until the land gave out, cut timber until the trees were gone and sold bark to the tanneries until blight killed the chestnut trees. They built walls with the stones gathered from the rocky ground and hauled in mulch and soil for their family gardens.

They raised chickens, hogs and cows, mostly milk cows. They were good gardeners, harvesting ears of corn reportedly as long as their arms. Some of that corn went into stills, because in the mountains most everyone made moonshine for medicinal purposes and personal use, and a few folks sold their shine to the flatlanders.

The story goes that one of those moonshiners would bring his daughters down from the mountain on sales trips.

They were great big girls, and they’d sit at the roadside near Beech Springs with jugs tucked underneath their voluminous skirts to wait for the city folks on their way to the camp.

When Apple was King

A

fter the loss of the tannery and its jobs in 1911, apples became Sperryville’s foundation. From the 1880s into the early 1900s. P.H. O’Bannon, who had a general store in the village, bought and shipped most of the apples grown in the orchards near the village. In 1918, a firm from New York opened an apple drying plant that operated until 1937.

Then local growers banded together into

694,098 visitors entered Shenandoah National Park in its first year, and with Skyline Drive’s completion, the number jumped to almost a million

a cooperative, built a packing shed, cold storage and a juice plant on the east side of the village, providing jobs and selling apples and apple juice under the Skyline Drive and Red Creek brands from 1937 until 1969.

Ruth Kiger, who grew up in Old Hollow listening to the stories of her mother and grandmother, says local boys “over there” were often surprised by Winesaps and Yorks in barrels stamped with the names of Rappahannock orchards. Her great grandfather Joe Billie Bowen had orchards and made barrels in the hollow, “and when Charlie Atkins’ great uncle

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SPERRYFEST • RAPPAHANNOCK NEWS • APRIL 21, 2022

was in France, he saw a barrel stamped ‘Bowen,’” she remembered hearing. “It was like a letter from home!”

Trauma Before Blessings

M

eanwhile, George Pollock’s lobbying efforts eventually paid off, and in 1926, Congress authorized a park in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

But there was a caveat – no federal funds could go to the project. It was the Depression; donors didn’t want to give land or money. Fundraising was slow, so the state of Virginia stepped in to pass a mass condemnation law.

Four hundred and fifty families lived in the hollows and on the hillsides then. One hundred and thirty were “resettled,” the rest left on their own.

The state paid a pittance for the land; Ruth Kiger recalled her great grandfather receiving just $160 for almost 300 acres.

If their cabins weren’t torn down, the people came right back, according to Dorothy Housh, whose husband, Chester, was charged with solving resettlement problems. They thought of the mountains as home, even after their dwellings were torched.

“I don’t feel that will anything like receive for my Humble Home what it is worth to me,” wrote H.M Criser from Thornton Hollow to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, protesting the condemnation. But the protests didn’t help.

The BIG Attraction

I

n 1935, 180,00 acres of the Blue Ridge Mountains became Shenandoah National Park, preserving blue mountains’ majesty, remnants of virgin forest, cascading waterfalls, the sweep of Big Meadows and the precambrian granite of Old Rag, the oldest exposed rock formation in the U.S. Skyline Drive’s 105 miles of ridgetop road opened in 1939. offering access to it all this and grand views of the riches.

The drive had already brought smallscale riches to the village. The young men living at the Civilian Conservation Corps Camp #27 at Beech Springs built fire roads, planted trees, cut hiking trails, installed telephone and water systems and built the overlooks and rock walls along the drive. They were paid $30 a month, and $25 of that was sent home to their families. Many spent all or part of the remaining $5 in Sperryville, providing a trickle of cash to local merchants at a depressed time when many were heavily dependent on barter.

Also, mess sergeants and supply officers bought produce, eggs and milk and other supplies locally. That “real” money from the CCC was a boon to the village economy, but it didn’t come near to the economic boost from Shenandoah National Park.

The first year, 694,098 visitors entered the park, and with the Drive’s completion, the total jumped to almost a million.

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1980s Sperryville was a gateway village to that big attraction. At the park’s northern end, the entries closest to the D.C. metro area – one at Thornton Gap above Sperryville and the other just outside the town of Front Royal – were reached on one-lane roads going west. Route 211 through Rappahannock was shorter and straighter, so thousands upon thousands of visitors to the new park chose that alternative. Local lore has it that Sperryville residents could tell when the light changed in Warrenton by the park traffic either creeping or speeding past the village.

Soon there were hospitable signs of better times. Down from Beech Springs, Mrs. Swindler opened the Meadowbrook lunch room, offering chicken and ham dinners for 10 cents.

Charles Estes dispensed hospitality and home-cooked meals at the Cab Inn, as did the Swiss Chalet, and travelers also stayed at Sperryville’s boarding houses. Like merkels on a warm day after a rainy spell, apple, vegetable and gift stands popped up between the village and the park.

Maybe 30, maybe 25 at the high point – nobody kept an official count, and anyway, the number changed with the seasons and the years.

Old timers say that on weekends, manager Huey Atkins from the Parkway Gift Shop would drive his truck up the mountain past Beech Springs and the terminus of the fruit stands, then turn around and creep back at 10 miles per hour – repeatedly

– his aim being to give Greater Sperryville’s curb appeal a chance to draw in the outbound tourists flowing home.

Then Came 66

B

GLASSBLOWER ERIC KVARNES

working at his traveling glass furnace was a hot attraction at the launch of Sperryville’s newest tourist draw, the Historic Main Street festival. This was the Apple Harvest Festival of 1985.

GREG TURNER/RAPP NEWS

FESTIVALS SHOWCASED LOCAL ARTS AND CRAFTS,

helping to brand Sperryville as an arts center and sweeping the village to the foreground of today’s artscape of the foothills.

In 1985, Jeanne Drevas wove the baskets that won her acceptance into the prestigious juried art markets of Baltimore and New York.

JON KLAVERKAMP/RAPP NEWS

ut in 1982, the flow slowed to a trickle. With the last section of Interstate 66 completed, drivers from Washington, D.C., Virginia, Maryland and points beyond had a faster, more direct route through neighboring Warren County to the park. Sperryville’s gate to the Blue Ridge stopped swinging open as wide and as often, and hinges grew rusty.

“It was like death when I-66 happened,” recalled Cheri Woodard, who started her first Sperryville business, Faith Mountain Herbs and Antiques, on Main Street in 1977 in the Amiss House (where Dr. Amiss treated patients a century earlier.) The fruit stands dwindled with the traffic, and shops suffered. “We had to find ways to bring the people back,” Woodard noted.

Let the Festivals Begin!

F

estivals proved to be the strongest magnet for folks in nearby counties, the day trippers from the Washington, D.C./Maryland/Virginia megalopolis and tourists from further beyond.

Faith Mountain’s seventh anniversary open house in 1983 set the stage. A major attraction was Flossie Williamson, the

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12625 Lee Hwy. Washington, VA S8

RAPPAHANNOCK NEWS • APRIL 21, 2022 • SPERRYFEST

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ol ted olving grand lady of herbs from Woodville and Woodard’s herb mentor, who shared tips for growing herbs and the secrets of her famous herb butters, vinegars and salads. Two dozen or so Artists of the Blue Ridge exhibited in Faith Mountain’s back yard. Patricia Brennen remembered that first show as “great fun, good attendance and good sales . . . It was the perfect way to introduce myself to Sperryville,” added the stained-glass artist, who has since shared galleries at different village locations and is now part of Main Street’s Thornton River Art. Other local businesses had their own draws for open house weekend, Faith Mountain flooded news outlets with promotional press releases and tourists responded. “It was a financial, promotional and social success, and it was FUN!” Cheri recalled.

It was also the catalyst for the establishment of the Sperryville Business Council, which joined with civic organizations, churches, community groups, the Rescue Squad and the fire department to put on the wildly successful first-of-its-kind Sperryville Apple Harvest Celebration two years later in October 1985.

“The ground has sunk ten inches from the weight of all these people out here,” Jesse Pond, Sperryville resident and wagon-maker, told the Rappahannock News as he surveyed the crowd.

1990s

rs Belle Meade space

THE HILLS WERE REALLY AND TRULY ALIVE with the sound of music for the eight years of the Rappahannock

Music Festival. As many as 22 combinations of local music makers played on Mountainside Market’s stage for the two-day sound celebration, a big draw for local audiences. COURTESY OF BRIAN ROSS

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634 Long Mountain Rd, Washington VA 22747 540.675.1234 • www. japanesemaples.com RAPPAHANNOCK NEWS • APRIL 21, 2022 • SPERRYFEST

According to owner Maurice O’Bannon, the parking lot at That Sperryville Emporium set a fullness record. With its outsized collection of gifts, garden pots, antiques, trinkets, apparel, knick-knacks and what-nots overflowing the old Sperryville School, the Emporium regularly pulled in tour buses, pick-up trucks and cars, albeit in much smaller numbers. This day, the lot was “crowded enough to run us out of water by 11 o’clock. It would take a dozen wells to keep up with all the people we had,” O’Bannon advised the newspaper.

There was no formal crowd count but estimates put the visitors to Rappahannock at 80,000 for the weekend, drawn by the trifecta of autumn color, Sperryville’s Apple Harvest Festival and Trinity Episcopal Church’s annual house tour and dried flower sale.

And the Good Times Rolled

“S

perryville’s aim was to show people such a good time that they would return,” recalled festival coordinator, artist and local businessman Martin Woodard.

So, the good times rolled with the combination of apples, art show, antiques, crafts, galleries, live music, snow cones and Southern barbecue, horse-drawn wagon tours, kids’ corners and face painting, special sales, rare finds, country hospitality and more.

Violinist Boyd Tinsley, best known as a member of the Dave Matthews Band, played from a front porch on Main Street. Rappahannock’s odd couple – conservative national columnist James J. Kilpatrick and liberal Senator Eugene McCarthy – autographed their latest books. And it all happened in a quaint and charming piece of small-town USA, with the planet’s oldest mountains for a backdrop.

So, of course, the people returned.

They came for the Spring Festival, Blue Ridge Christmas, St. Patrick’s Day Parade, fire department carnivals and parades, and art shows at Oldway Craft Village.

The Sound of Music

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or eight years, beginning in 1995, the Rappahannock Music Festival rocked Sperryville on an early autumn weekend with musicians playing Saturday and Sunday from midday into the night on an outdoor stage at Mountainside

Market. Organized by Mountainside’s owner Brian Ross, now a mainstay of Sperryville’s rescue squad, it had dual drivers: boosting local businesses and creating an opportunity for scores of local musicians to perform for hometown fans.

Local was key. Every group had to have at least one member who lived or worked in Rappahannock County.

Music spanned the genres – rock, country, old time, blues, Motown, bluegrass, reggae, folk, classical and gospel. Bleachers, folding chairs and blankets provided the seating.

Admission was free, so was parking, and the performers played gratis, as soloists, duos, trios, quartets and even bigger bands, as many as 22 acts over the two days. The atmosphere was relaxed, easy and family-friendly, with picnickers welcome, and refreshments also available from the market.

“For the first festival, I just asked the musicians I knew. It seems as though there’s at least one in every Rappahannock household, and they all said yes. No one turned me down.” Ross remembered.

The following seven years, he hardly had to ask. Instead, musicians asked him. “People looked forward to the music, and bands sought me out to play.” But despite its popularity and the excellence of the music, the event didn’t grow. Audiences topped 300 but not by much. “It started local and stayed local. No changes. We moved up the date to avoid freezing to death, but that was it,” Ross said. And a year before the closure of the health food and gourmet Mountainside Market, the music stopped.

AB R ACA DAB R A MASSAGE AND WELLNESS

Cooter’s National Brand Begins in Sperryville

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usic and crowds moved up the road when Ben Jones opened Cooter’s, named for his role as Cooter Davenport in the hit comedy series, “The Dukes of Hazzard.” Ben had grown up in Virginia, and when he tired of city living in L.A. and D.C., he looked west from the D.C. metro area and found Sperryville. He and his wife Alma rented a house on Water Street and fell hard and fast in love with Rappahannock. “Paradise,” Ben calls it.

He spotted a Dukes of Hazzard lunch box on the shelf of Betty Pullen’s Sperryville antique shop, and when he told her he was one of the guys pictured, she asked him if he was interested in buying a

1980s

AT THE ANNUAL FIRE DEPARTMENT PARADES ,

“Townies” hosted front porch cookouts and after that community celebration, they hustled up to the excitement at the carnival on the firehouse grounds.

540-878-7085 www.caracadabra.com 32 Main Street , Sperr yville, VA , 22740

COURTESY OF CHERI WOODARD

SPERRYFEST • RAPPAHANNOCK NEWS • APRIL 21, 2022

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home in the county. She directed him to a just-listed property in Harris Hollow, and Alma was signing the contract an hour after she saw the place. Ben retrieved his collection of treasures from the TV show and filled the barn in Harris Hollow, so when he spotted the “for sale or rent” sign on the Sperryville fruit stand, he was ready. He hauled the treasures from the barn, transformed the fruit stand into a Dukes of Hazzard museum with a stage for the garage band, and parked the General Lee, a red ’69 Dodge Charger, out front.

Several thousand people came to Cooter’s grand opening in 1999, and because Alma is a public relations specialist who knows how to promote, NBC, local TV stations and reporters from The Washington Post, Washingtonian Magazine and Conde Nast Traveler came along, too.

“Conde Nast? Tahiti and Cooter’s,” quipped Jones.

The festivals added in 2001,02 and 03 were Dukes of Hazzard reunions starring Daisy Duke, cousins Bo and Luke Duke and others in the cast . . . along with thousands of fans.

Cooter’s outgrew the fruit stand and added another Cooter’s in Nashville across from the Grand Old’ Opry. Over 100,000 people came for the first Duke Fest held there at a race track in 2004, the Nashville Tennessean calling it the city’s largest family event ever. After trying another location just past the opposite end of the village, Ben and Alma moved their Sperryville Cooter’s to Luray, where it’s now Page County’s

1990s2000s

second biggest draw, just behind the Luray Caverns.

“In Sperryville, we discovered how happy people are to relive their childhoods,” said Alma. “It made them smile to remember watching the Dukes when they were children, and that’s worth doing – earning those smiles.”

SperryFest Returns

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perryFest was launched in 2019, gearing up for the village’s Bicentennial the

next year and centered around a rubber duck race on the Mighty Thornton. The race began in 2018, with a test run of 250 ducks from the village’s downtown, all the way to the site of the old packing shed, cold storage and juice plant. The festival sputtered when Covid hit. Now, after a two-year hiatus, it’s back, with more fun, more ducks, more attractions, more artists and crafters, more music, more food, more of everything.

After 202 years, the welcome mat is still out in Sperryville.

“DUKES OF HAZZARD” fans came by the hundreds to visit the first Dukes’ museum at Cooter’s and hear Cooter’s Garage Band play.

For the Dukes of Hazzard Reunions that brought Daisy and others in the cast to Sperryville, they came by the thousands, shuttled from parking lots up and down the road. This attraction quickly outgrew its accommodations, so Ben Jones – Cooter Davenport of the Dukes – moved his new brand over the mountain, where it is now Page County’s second favorite tourist attraction, ranking just behind the Luray Caverns. COURTESY OF BEN JONES

The Sperryville Community Alliance wishes to say THANK YOU for supporting SperryFest 2022!

Our SperryFest Sponsors

Businesses of Rappahannock, Cheri Woodard Realty, Thorsen Construction, AARP Virginia, Rappahannock Electric Cooperative, Oak View Bank, Skyline Hydroponics, Corner Store, Francis Bar, Rappahannock Pizza Kitchen, Lessard Collaborative, Belle Meade School, RAAC, Rappahannock News, The MadRapp Recorder.

Sperryville Organizing Committee

Kerry Sutten, Robert Archer, Kim Nelson, Anita Carshult, Kevin Cheetham, Dot Lessard, Susan Huff, Kat Skalicky, Kathy Kidd, Bob Trafton, Katy Thomas, Jami Davis, Darcy Justen, Traci Agrati

Sheriff Connie Compton and the Rappahannock Sheriff's Department Ritchie Burke and the Sperryville Volunteer Fire Department Todd Summers and the Sperryville Volunteer Rescue Squad David Jenkins and the crew at VDOT - Flatwood Kathy Tester and the Sperryville Post Office staff

For offering your valuable parking lots:

Cliff and Jordan Miller and Cliff and Lucille Miller at Headmaster's Pub Sherri Fickel and Kevin Kraditor at Hopkins Ordinary & Aleworks Jennings, Van and Lain Carney at Pen Druid Alex Sharp, Rick Wasmund, and the businesses of the River District Reynold's Memorial Baptist Church & Pastor John Heddleston Sperryville United Methodist Church & Pastor Jeff Thompson

All the Duck Chasers and Catchers, Festival tent and Kid's Corner volunteers, and crew that pitched in to set up and clean-up.

And, importantly, the residents of Main Street, who generously allow us to inconvenience them for a day of community and duck racing.

Community doesn’t happen without U!

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RAPPAHANNOCK NEWS • APRIL 21, 2022 • SPERRYFEST