Heritage Festival to be held at Jacktown
Ryerson Station State Park’s fifth annual Outdoor Heritage Festival will be held at the Jacktown Fairgrounds this year.
The festival, which will be held Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., celebrates nature, outdoor fun and the history of the area that goes back to those who first hunted in these hills 5,000 years ago.
The festival’s regular site at Ryerson was closed this year because of work over the summer to dredge silt from the valley floor that was once Duke Lake, so this popular, family-friendly fall event will instead fill the historic fairgrounds in Wind Ridge.
Local re-enactors, in full historic regalia, will be there to show how life used to be lived when the “local supermarket” was what a person could hunt, fish or gather from the land. There will be the wonders of nature, including a Wild World of Animals and Pennsylvania exhibit with snakes, both benign and poisonous, courtesy of Ben Dean.
Re-enactor Dan Caldwell will demonstrate the primitive skills of the Delaware tribe and festivalgoers have a chance to hone their own hunting skills with Crossbow 101 and Fly Casting Basics, sponsored by Field and Stream’s store in Washington. Team Green Outdoors will put on an archery show and state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources has a variety of educational programs geared for hunting, foraging and nature identification. Other demonstrations include chainsaw carving with Thomas Hritz.
The Richhill Township Fire Department will do a chicken roast and Lardin House Inn will provide additional food and refreshments.
Saturday’s festival also gives the public a chance to add input to the ongoing “Re-Vision Ryerson” project after it was announced in July that Duke Lake would not be restored.
Some members of the new task force that formed this summer to help Ryerson Station State Park reinvent itself as a place to fish and have other water and recreational activities will be on hand all day to gather public comments and answer questions.
For more information, call the park office at 724-428-4254, or visit the Friends of Ryerson Station State Park on Facebook.