Rain holds off for annual Red Hills Festival
LOUISVILLE, Miss., (WCBI) — The rain didn’t put a damper on the 45th annual Red Hills Festival held Saturday in downtown Louisville.
The rain went away just in time for many to enjoy the annual Red Hills Festival in downtown Louisville. The festival kicked off at 8 a.m. with a 5k and continued throughout the day.
As the sun began to come out, so did the festival faithful.
Louisville/Winston Chamber of Commerce Director Amy Hillyer says now that the rain is gone, the day is going to pick up.
“Now that that’s stopped, I think everybody’s going to come out, have lunch, buy some things from our vendors, and let the kids play. We had so many great sponsors this year that we were able to offer the Kids Zone for $5 for an armband. So we’re really excited that all of the children will be able to participate and get to have fun today.”
This is the first time the festival has been held on Mother’s Day weekend. In years past, the festival has been held around Memorial Day. But a few years back, they made the decision to change the date.
“We were having it on Memorial Day for many years but then people had started traveling a lot on Memorial Day so we were missing some of our locals, a lot of our sponsors. So we decided to kind of play with the dates a little bit. We kind of moved it around some. This is our first time to have it on Mother’s Day weekend, so we’re just kind of testing out and see. So far once this weather has broken, we’ve got a lot of people out so we’re real excited about that.”
The best thing about the Red Hills Festival, is that it not only celebrates Louisville, it helps with the economy and showcases what the city has to offer.
“They’ll stay in Louisville the night before from vendors to visitors and then we also have — it’s a huge day for our main street businesses. We put the tents for our outside vendors that come in, in the middle. So there’s still a lot of great space and a lot of our hometown stores have things on the sidewalks. They have specials; they have wonderful things going on for Red Hills. So a lot of people that come in town that may not be familiar with our local shops, they go in they see what they have. And if they don’t buy today, they’ll come back and shop later.”
This year, they also held the first Miss Red Hills Little Miss Pageant.
