Glendale Crossing Festival expected to bring at least 20,000 people to historic small town

GLENDALE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Crowds of at least 20,000 people are expected to fill the small town of Glendale this Saturday for the annual Glendale Crossing Festival.

The fall festival first began in 1978 as a way to help raise money for the park. Since then, the festival has continued to grow each year and help with investments in the community.

"The Crossing Festival, Inc. funds go for maintenance in town," said Sheree Vance, chairperson for the festival. "We have worked on the fire station, we have procured the park property ... two different times we have bought new playground equipment, we have put in sidewalks."

And that list goes on.

The only year the festival didn't happen was in 2020, when events across the world shut down due to the pandemic.

"It says we're doing something right in our community to get people to come back each and every year and we do," said Mike Cummins, a board member for the festival and former owner of the Whistle Stop restaurant. "In fact, during the pandemic year, even though we didn't have the festival, people still showed up that day thinking that we were going to do it because it's always been on the third Saturday in October."

This year, the Glendale Crossing Festival is expected to bring in a crowd more than 10 times the size of the town's population.

"My favorite part about it, believe it or not, is just seeing all the people that get in this little town for one day," said Cummins. "And by seven o'clock at night, everybody's gone. It's back to like a little Mayberry."

The festival features hundreds of booths with vendors selling antiques, homemade and handmade products, desserts, gift items and more. Bringing in the crowd also helps local shops lining Main Street have one of their busiest selling days of the year.

"The Crossing Festival is one of the most exciting things in the state of Kentucky, I think," said Cummins.

Sisters setting up booth for Glendale Crossing Festival — Of the hundreds of vendors at the annual Glendale Crossing Festival, Marilou Pate from Edmonson County was one of the first to set up shop. She, along with her sister, were busy getting tables and tents into place Thursday, Oct. 13, 2022. (WDRB photo)

Of the hundreds of vendors, Marilou Pate from Edmonson County was one of the first to set up shop. She, along with her sister, were busy getting tables and tents into place Thursday afternoon.

"Everybody's talked about how big the crowd was and we just decided to jump in and try it this year," said Pate.

Her booth will feature a little bit of everything, she said.

"I'll have cream candy, homemade fudge, mini bundt cakes, I have polymer clay ornaments handmade, antiques ... which would be a lot of glassware, primitives," said Pate.

According to the festival Facebook page, this is the first year with corporate sponsors, SK Innovation and Ford. The new Ford battery plant, which will be called BlueOvalSK Battery Park, is being built just a few miles from historic downtown Glendale and construction is going on now at the site.

Ford construction site for battery plant in Hardin County, Oct. 13, 2022 — Ongoing construction for the new Ford battery plant in Hardin County on Thursday, Oct. 13, 2022. (WDRB photo)

"They are actually helping us this year with the festival and from what we've seen from them, they are going to be really good community players in this town. They want to work with us. They want to see the historic part of Glendale remain the same as it's always been. And we're glad about that because a lot of people were concerned about that and we just hope we can have a good working relationship with all of them as they come into town," said Cummins.

Cummins said he also believes construction in the area will be paused for the day of the festival.

"They're not supposed to work on Saturday. I don't see how they could even if they wanted to. But they agreed to do that and we thought that was very nice of them and also the people -- I think it's Scotty's Paving -- that's doing the interstate construction, they're not going to work on Saturday, either. And our hats are off to both those companies," said Cummins.