{"id":1624,"date":"2019-07-03T00:59:31","date_gmt":"2019-07-03T00:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pumpkinfestival.org\/new\/?p=1624"},"modified":"2025-03-12T18:27:51","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T18:27:51","slug":"history-of-keene-pumpkin-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pumpkinfestival.org\/index.php\/2019\/07\/03\/history-of-keene-pumpkin-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"History of Keene Pumpkin Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Nancy Sporborg founded the Pumpkin Festival and ran the event\u00a0for seven years, 1991-1995 and in 1999 and 2000, She\u00a0originally wrote this message in\u00a02009. It has been edited\u00a0and updated.<\/em>

The Pumpkin Festival started out as a gift to a\u00a0community from\u00a0its\u00a0downtown merchants. It became a gift to the world.

The event\u00a0started as a\u00a0Harvest Festival in 1991, when downtown merchants, through a\u00a0newly formed Downtown Association, paid for and hosted the first festival. Their aim was to bring new life and vitality to a downtown that seemed to be on the verge of collapse with stores closing, little foot traffic and even less excitement.

As the\u00a0community center\u2019s heart got healthier, fame sprouted. The invitation to simply carve a pumpkin to help break a World Record appealed to many. And, when people\u00a0arrived in downtown Keene and saw the Main Street filled with shimmering pumpkins smiling as they sat cheek-to-cheek on scaffolding towers, milk crates and ladders\u2014well, they were blown away. They had to come back the next year and bring Aunt Eleanor and Uncle John.

The Pumpkin Festival\u00a0has been\u00a0broadcasting to the world what can happen when people come together for no other purpose than making magic happen. The Festival, unlike most other Festivals, has no ulterior motives. It is not about making money, amassing funds for charity, selling stuff,\u00a0or trying to\u00a0get votes. The heart of the Pumpkin Festival lies in the pumpkins. The meaning of the Pumpkin Festival lies in everyone\u2019s participation. The beauty of the Pumpkin Festival lies in what is created\u00a0together. What better gift could there be than to show the world what a\u00a0community can do?

Here\u2019s the pitch Nancy Sporborg issued during the festival\u2019s heyday:

Get out there and join your neighbors, businesses, schools, volunteers, organizations and residents who are knee-deep in pumpkin guts and glory. The spotlight is on! Revel in it! Carve a pumpkin, which will represent you in this heart-felt effort. Make your pumpkin personal by carving your name, a special date, message to a loved one, design or logo. Register it at the Pumpkin Shop on Central Square, then walk around and find the perfect location for your creation. Check out the incredible glowing pumpkin creativity. Welcome people to your hometown. Be courteous. Smile. Take pride in what your community can do. Wait for the count with anticipation, knowing you helped. Know that this special event on the eastern seaboard found a way into the hearts of hundreds of thousands on the planet. Stand in the flickering light of thousands of jack-o\u2019-lanterns and take a bow.<\/em>

As the Festival grew it became too big for the merchants to own by themselves. It belonged to the whole community, and required everyone\u2019s efforts to make it happen. Center Stage, a nonprofit organization, was born in 1994. The organization\u2019s purpose was to bring the community together in celebration throughout the year. For 20 years, Center Stage and its dedicated volunteers hosted the world each October and succeeded in winning eight world records for the most lit jack-o\u2019-lanterns in one place. The festival was not cancelled in 2001 after the September 11 attacks. Extensive security measures were put in place and upgraded annually at a high cost to event management. Each year security costs grew, with a large portion of the\u00a0resources\u00a0going to the neighborhoods where college-age people reside, until finally Center Stage\u00a0decided\u00a0that if costs and conduct couldn\u2019t be controlled, the event could not continue.

After Pfest 2010, the festival was saved from demise by a new group of volunteers led by Ruth Sterling, owner of an ad agency involved in the festival during its early years. Sterling, attorney John Hayes, insurance professional Lisa Edwards, hotel manager Alex Bates, and Keene State College professor Mike Haines founded \u201cLet it Shine, Inc.\u201d and earned nonprofit status on October 31, 2011 (Halloween). A competing festival in Highwood, IL, began in 2011 and in 2012 and was featured with Keene in HGTV\u2019s \u201cPumpkin Wars\u201d hosted by the Property Brothers. The Keene festival won the contest with 29,381 jack-o\u2019-lanterns and earned that amount in dollars from Discover Card. The prize money was earmarked for educational nonprofits; area schools, youth programs and other educational programs received the funds.

In 2013, Keene committed to bringing home the world record lost to Boston in 2006. And on\u00a0a\u00a0perfect evening in October 2013, thanks to a colossal gift of pumpkins to the community from C&S Wholesale Grocers, a new world record was achieved: 30,581 lit jack-o\u2019-lanterns.

The shine was back but darkness threatened still in the college neighborhoods where neighbors and police found the influx of rowdy \u201cragers\u201d untenable in 2014. With no guaranteed security plan for the neighborhoods, the festival could not continue\u2026 or could it?

Charlie St. Clair of Laconia Motorcycle Week heard about the extinction of this New England treasure and paved the way for the 25th annual festival to take place in Laconia, \u201cwhere every day is amazing,\u201d as the city\u2019s slogan promised. So residents of the heart of New Hampshire, the lake city of Laconia, had their turn to shine. The New Hampshire Pumpkin Festival has taken place in Laconia since 2015, often with a version of the spectacular tower and new features that made it unique to the Lakes Region. In the meantime in 2016, Nancy Sporborg published a book entitled, “Pumpkin Festival 25 years,” the profits of which she pledged to future pumpkin festivals. Her gifts, in the many thousands of dollars, have helped fuel the rekindling of Keene Pumpkin Festival in the HeART of Downtown Keene.

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One dark February evening at Ramunto’s in Keene, members of the Let it Shine team\u2014including steadfast new Board Chair Tim Zinn\u2014envisioned a back-to-basics Keene festival built on the creativity of school children. Miraculously, through the carving of\u00a0 kids in SAU29 schools, Keene’s Central Square was again the site of a magnificent jack-o’-lantern display on Sunday, October 29, 2017. The plan was repeated in 2018 convincing everyone of its beauty and potential.

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As we prepare for the 2019 Keene Pumpkin Festival in the HeART of Downtown Keene we do so on the shoulders of countless volunteers who have persisted because of their love of this special event. History has taught us that light drives out darkness and pumpkin light shines strong in Keene, NH.


Taking a page from the book written by Keene Pumpkin Festival founder, Nancy Sporborg, for the record, here are the World Records set by the festival, included the unbeaten record set in 2013 of 30,581 jack-o\u2019-lanterns all lit in the same spot. Find this and other fun facts in the book, “Pumpkin Festival: The Magic, the Light, the Pictures and the Meaning, 25 years, 1991-2015.\u201d Available at Toadstool Bookshop<\/a>, Keene, NH.

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\"Keene

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Nancy Sporborg founded the Pumpkin Festival and ran the event\u00a0for seven years, 1991-1995 and in 1999 and 2000, She\u00a0originally wrote this message in\u00a02009. It has been edited\u00a0and updated. The Pumpkin Festival started out as a gift to a\u00a0community from\u00a0its\u00a0downtown merchants. It became a gift to the world. The event\u00a0started as a\u00a0Harvest Festival in 1991, when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1566,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pumpkinfestival.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pumpkinfestival.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pumpkinfestival.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pumpkinfestival.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pumpkinfestival.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1624"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.pumpkinfestival.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2773,"href":"https:\/\/www.pumpkinfestival.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1624\/revisions\/2773"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pumpkinfestival.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pumpkinfestival.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pumpkinfestival.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pumpkinfestival.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}