Circleville Pumpkin Show
The Circleville Pumpkin Show always begins the 3rd Wednesday in October and runs through Saturday. The Pumpkin Show got its start in 1903 when George Haswell, Mayor of Circleville, was also Superintendent of the Water Works & had an office on West Main Street. He decided that it would be a great idea to try to get the country folks and city folks together so he invited the country folks to bring the best of their produce to town on the designated dates & display them on the streets of Circleville so that the city folks would be able to appreciate their efforts. That first show covered about 3 city blocks and has been going steady ever since. Today Circleville Pumpkin festival covers more than 8 city blocks.
If you've never been to the festival before, it is like nothing else. Crowds of people from all over the state converge on Circleville. Things start out slow on Wednesday morning with the weigh-in and then builds to a crescendo on Saturday. Saturday afternoon has traffic backed up for miles trying to get to round-town.
With your first visit to the Circleville Pumpkin Show you'll discover that there's more than one way to present normal carnival foods: there's the normal way and then there's the Pumpkin Show way. You've got pumpkin chili, pumpkin waffles, pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin burgers, just about everything can be had with a flavoring of pumpkin. There is also a huge pumpkin pie that measures about 6 feet in diameter and over 100,000 pumpkins will be sold during the 4 day event.
Now, you might think that all this pumpkin stuff would get, well, would get to be too much. But that's one of the amazing things about the festival: it doesn't. It seems like one of the most natural things in the world. Besides all the pumpkin related food items, there's plenty of rides scattered all through the blocked off streets. There's also plenty of vendors selling just about anything you can imagine.
And speaking of the world, the Circleville Pumpkin Show has received world-wide publicity. It has been featured on Japanese television and magazines, German newspapers, Stars and Stripes, NBC Today, publications from Our Weekly Reader, National Geographic and most of the major publications in the United States. Each year the festival attracts people from all over the world.
Pumpkin pie eating contest
If you don't like crowds, you probably shouldn't wait until the last day (especially if it's a beautiful fall day). Go earlier in the week. If you do mind the crowds, by all means go early on Saturday. There's something going on just about every minute of the day.
Like they say: "It's the Greatest Free Show in the World!"
Video of the 2009 Top 10 Pumpkins at Weigh-in:
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