Scull Shoals Spring Festival is Saturday, May 3, 2008!

This is the really big deal at the old mill village for this spring!  Look for some familiar faces among the crafters, and new ones, too.  We will have folks demonstrating and talking with visitors about their 19th century crafts, while they are doing them. 

You might even get a chance to try your hand at making a candle, or a piece of paper, splitting oak for a basket, or singing along with the old-time musicians who are preserving the musical past.  Most of the crafters are more than happy to tell you how they got started, and help you begin in their field if you desire.



Since we represent a papermaking and textile mill town, there will be papermakers, spinners and weavers featured, along with a blacksmith, basket maker, hair jewelry maker, and many more.  There will be story-telling time, when we have Mary Ruth Moore to read from her Great-Grandfather’s letters from the Civil War front to his family at home, old Jack Hunt, long-time storekeeper spinning yarns about life in the village under old Dr. Poullain’s ownership, and Doc Hatchett, the Pharmacist, talking about the medicines he prepares and sells to cure the ills of the community.  He’s only 80, and just about to get hitched for the first time!  This ought to be a hoot!

We hope to hear from Dr. Janice Fisher about the Georgia History Educational Enrichment Program (translation: hands-on fun learning in the classroom!) that the Friends of Scull Shoals are currently sponsoring with the support of the North Georgia Community Foundation and the Chattahoochee Oconee Forest Interpretive Committee in the counties around Scull Shoals.

As usual, we’ll have lunch, this time with Phil Bainbridge returning with “Phil’s Phamous Burgers and Hot Dogs,” and a lot of other goodies supplied by the Friends members.  There will be Guided Tours of the Village throughout the day, led by our enthusiastic tour guides, Bob Skarda and Ed Goff.    One of the highlights of the tour will be a visit to an open archaeological excavation, interpreted by one or more of the original volunteer archaeologists who worked at the site as part of the Passport In Time program, 1999-2003. 

There will be items for sale at the sales tent, including the ever-popular multi-colored choices of Scull Shoals T-shirts, our own note papers, and Bob Skarda’s wonderful Old Oconee Pins.  You should get those while they last, as Bob says he won’t be making them again!  There’s usually a drawing near the end of the day for some of these items, and perhaps some ironwork from our own Scull Shoals blacksmith, Louis Salmon.  These are authentic Scull Shoals mill village artifacts, made here –while you watch.  That way you get a real accurate date on them: May 3, 2008, between 10 am and 3 pm!  Any archaeologist would salivate over that kind of detail!

For directions and a map to the Historic Scull Shoals Mill Village for the Festival and Tour Day, please see the Directions Page on this website!  We hope to see you there!