Don’t miss the New Deal Festival in Arthurdale this Saturday, July 9.
If you’ve never been to Arthurdale, our local New Deal community, this Saturday is the perfect time for a first visit. Located just a half-hour outside Morgantown, the community was established in 1933 to provide jobs for miners and farmers who lost their work in the Great Depression. Its annual New Deal Festival runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on July 9, and it’s not like any festival you’ve been to in recent decades:
Tour the buildings and enjoy artisan demonstrations
The buildings that make up the New Deal Homestead Museum will be open. Watch blacksmiths work in the historic forge. See buttons and posters from FDR’s presidential campaigns. Learn how wool is spun into yarn at a spinning wheel demonstration.
Hear the stories
Meet the children of original homesteaders and talk with them about what it was like actually growing up in Arthurdale.
Have some wholesome, old-fashioned community fun
Kids can play cornhole, visit the farm petting zoo, and take in a marionette show. They can compete in a sack race or a watermelon eating contest. Adults can enter their proudest pastries in a good old country fair pie-baking contest. Everyone can join a hay wagon ride.
All this, plus an antique car and tractor show, a craft market with demonstrations, food trucks and a craft beer garden, and live music. Entry is just $10 for adults, $5 for kids 5 to 11, and free for the littlest ones—a New Deal good deal.
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