The Monticello Festival and Events Association announced Wednesday that final preparations for the inaugural Forest Festival are being made by the association’s board of directors.
The Forest Festival will be held April 3-4 in McCloy Park in Monticello. The weekend of events is scheduled to kick-off fundraising efforts for the planned state-wide forestry festival, Arkansas Forest Fest, to be held in April 2016.
The festival will include the Miss Arkansas Forestry Pageant. The title pageant will be an official preliminary competition for the Miss United States National Forestry Pageant held each August in Tifton, Ga.
Association President and Monticello Mayor Zack Tucker said the pageants will be held at Earl Willis Auditorium on the campus of Drew Central.
“We are so excited to have Drew Central School District as a partner for this event,” Tucker said. “We would like to thank them for there contribution to the festival. We look forward to working with the district for many years into the future.”
Contestants can register for the pageant at the festival website, www.arkasasforestfest.com.
The board of directors selected a t-shirt design from 12 entries received last fall to serve as the artwork for the festival’s first t-shirt. A design, submitted Elizabeth Borse Newman, will be used as the artwork for the official t-shirt. Pre-orders for the Arkansas Forest Fest t-shirt can now be made online at their website, www.arkasasforestfest.com. T-shirts are $15 each for sizes small through extra-large. There will be larger sizes available as well for additional costs.
Tucker said the shirts can pre-ordered online through March 1. Once the initial order for shirts has been placed, the shirts will be available for purchase through local businesses as well as online.
The festival will also include the Arkansas Forest Fest Geocache Challenge.
Tucker said one of the core purposes of the Arkansas Forest Fest is to celebrate the timber industry, which makes up half of the labor force in the region, and to promote the education of forestry, while attracting regional and national attention to the forest industry and Monticello and Drew County as a tourist destination. Use of Global Information Systems (GIS) data, including GPS coordinates, is a major part of forestry in the 21st century.
“The Festival Board believes geocaching provides a medium to highlight both skills used in the forestry industry and the tourist sites in the area,” Tucker said. “In cooperation with the Southern Leadership Network’s “Geocache Southeast Arkansas” campaign, the Arkansas Forest Fest will be hosting a multi-stage/multi-cache challenge during the month of March leading up to the festival.”
Tucker said the 25 geocashes are designed to help tell as story related to this year’s theme,” A Cashey History of Drew County.” See the website for official rules and how to enter. The event begins on March 1.
The festival will also include the Southern Fried Championship, where participants can enter in a deep fried food competition. The on-site event will have three categories: meat, sides and dessert.
The festival will also include family entertainment, vendors, a carnival, a parade and children’s activities.
The festivals full schedule, which will include specific times for each event, and entertainment announcement will be released in the coming weeks.
For more information on the festival, visit www.arkansasforestfest.com Anyone wishing to become a vendor for this event can contact Gay Pace at ggbpace@att.net or visit the website for more information.
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