Celebrates 44th Year
By Lenore Vickrey
For many folks in Henagar, Alabama, a small town (pop. 2,500) in DeKalb County, their first job was working in a potato shed. “I was raised working in it (the potato industry),” says Starr McCurdy Mitchell, who grew up in Henagar and works at Sand Mountain Electric Cooperative. “My dad was a potato farmer for most of my life until he stopped growing them in 1997.”
And like many in her hometown, Mitchell has been active in the Sand Mountain Potato Festival, an annual July 4 event begun in 1982 as a way to celebrate the area’s potato farmers and help raise money to restore a log cabin in the city park. Back then, there were as many as 50 potato farmers in Henagar, once dubbed the “Potato Capital of the South.”
Since then, potato farming in the area has dwindled as large companies like Frito-Lay took their business elsewhere, but the Potato Festival has endured. “I have only missed one Sand Mountain Potato Festival since they started over 40 years ago,” says Mitchell. “Attendance is a staple at my house, so much so, that my son flew home from his internship in D.C. last summer because he had never missed a 4th of July
Potato Festival.”
City events coordinator Sherry Graham says that’s because the city motto is “Come Home to Henagar.” Former residents and family members travel back to their home to celebrate the town and country on July 4. She estimates up to 15,000 persons will attend. “I’d love to know who comes the farthest,”
she adds.
Activities include live gospel, country and bluegrass music, an antique car show, antique tractor show, pony rides, food vendors and arts and crafts. The day kicks off at 7 a.m. with a political breakfast hosted by Speaker of the House Rep. Nathaniel Ledbetter of Rainsville and Senate Majority Leader Sen. Steve Livingston of Scottsboro. A three-mile parade through town starts at 10 a.m., led by the Boy Scouts and the grand marshal, and includes division winners of the potato-related beauty pageants like Miss Tater Tot and the Sand Mountain Potato Festival queen.
In the early days the men in the Ruritan Club would cook 1,200 pounds of barbecue and their wives would cook beans and baked goods, but as that generation has faded, commercial food vendors have taken their place, Mitchell says. Early years also saw old-fashioned competitions like a watermelon seed-spitting contest; womanless beauty pageants; square dancing and clogging; and checkers and horseshoe tournaments.
This year, in connection with America’s 250th birthday, the festival will give away semiquincentennial items, the local library will hold a coloring contest and Henagar Junior High will hold a patriotic essay contest for students in grades 3-8. The day ends as it always has with a fireworks display.
Starr Mitchell and her family will be there. Working in her father’s potato business helped her see the value of hard work early on, she says. The festival “is a reminder of all that. I feel like I have a personal connection to it. It’s what my kids look forward to.”
For more information, visit cityofhenagar.com or follow City of Henagar on Facebook.
