But Whitetop’s three annual festivals are something else, too.
They’re fundraisers. Every $5 admission goes toward supporting the Mount Rogers volunteer fire department and rescue squad.
“We wanted a festival that would encourage people to come from all over, not just around here,” said Jaye Baldwin, longtime festival goer who used to also help organize the three celebrations, each of which draws between 5,000 and 10,000 people each year.
Baldwin said the whole Whitetop community comes together to put on the festivals for the benefit of its fire department and rescue squad.
“It’s a total community effort as far as the festivals are concerned,” he said.
While each festival has its focus food--maple syrup, ramps and sweet sorghum--it wouldn’t be a festival without the music, Baldwin said.
“Oh, the music adds a tremendous amount” to the festivals, Baldwin said. And the music is always local music--music of the Crooked Road.
“The concerts are as big a draw in their own venue as is the food,” he said. “What gets people here is the festivities that go on other than the food.”
Whitetop’s festivals also are celebrations of the town’s past. Each food has a specific local connection or production process that has been going on in the area for decades, and the festivals themselves have a root in history.
From 1932 to 1939, the Whitetop Folk Festival attracted people from far and wide to the small mountain community. In 1933, even First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt stopped by to celebrate.
Baldwin said he’s not sure if anyone knows anymore why, exactly, the First Lady decided to come to Whitetop’s Folk Festival in the middle of the Depression.
“I really don’t know. It was just a big deal at that time,” he said.
The Folk Festival never resumed after a flood in 1940 cancelled the activities. But decades later in the 1960s, locals wanted to reawaken the festival atmosphere--and use it to benefit their fire department. Thus began the three festivals still enjoyed today by the local community and visitors.
“We wanted to carry on the same tradition that was happening back then,” Baldwin said.
