This past weekend was a beautiful weekend to be outside and the perfect time to bring back the Dahlonega Gold Rush Days Festival.
This annual festival, hosted in downtown Dahlonega, was canceled last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a result, families were anxious to come back out and did so in numbers larger than any previous festival.
Sam McDuffie, tourism director for the Dahlonega-Lumpkin County Chamber and Visitors Bureau said 6,756 people entered the Visitors Center alone over the weekend.
Dathan Harbert, a member of the Board of Directors for Gold Rush, Inc., the nonprofit in charge of planning the festival said official attendance numbers for the festival are not in yet.
However, he anticipates the attendance numbers will be much higher than any year prior.
"If you would've looked down the streets from 9:30 a.m. until about 6 o'clock on Saturday, the streets were literally packed curb to curb with people," said Harbert. "Once we pull all of the numbers we'll start comparing, but it's going to be dramatically larger for sure."
Harbert said many people were excited to come out since the festival was canceled last year. He said many Dahlonega natives have planned family gatherings over the years around it.
"Gold Rush in Dahlonega is a really big deal because all of the families get together and have reunions and you see all the traditions of the contests and the music and stuff that we do," said Harbert. "People were just excited to get out and have fun, sort of get back to normal fall life and fall in the North Georgia mountains is always a beautiful time."
Just like every year prior, the festival took place during the third full weekend in October.
In addition to the numerous craft and product vendors, Harbert said all of the traditional competition that visitors have come to know and love took place as well.
"The cross-cut saw competition was a lot of fun this year, we had a lot of participants in it and the crowd really enjoyed it," said Harbert. "Arm wrestling is always a big event as far as contests go, where we get a bunch of guys up there to compete for the Gold Rush title of Best Arm Wrestler...our parade was huge on Saturday, we had a lot of participants in it, course there was lots of candy being thrown in it."
Harbert said money made through the sale of vendor booth spots, Gold Rush-themed shirts, and parade float registration helps fund other community projects throughout the year.
He said volunteers with Gold Rush, Inc. love participating in the festival because they know it helps give back to the community
"All of that money is returned back to our local community through various charity projects that we do throughout the year. Of course, coming up soon we're going to do our big Christmas project where we'll adopt families and provide them with the necessities of life that they need plus their Christmas wishlist," said Harbert. "We'll do college scholarships and then we'll also do random acts of kindness throughout the year where we'll help our friends and neighbors that are in need."
Naturally, the local economy benefits from the festival too. Many of the downtown businesses and restaurants see an increase in sales. Local nonprofits and organizations also benefit by working and selling parking spots on their property.
It will not be long until volunteers start planning for next year's festival. Harbert said the volunteers with Gold Rush, Inc. will take a couple of weeks to rest, then open up next year's vendor booth application on the first day of November.
