by Malcolm Butler
The 75th annual Peach Festival was ripe for the picking on Saturday.
And what is believed to be a record turnout enjoyed all of the food, fun and fellowship that comes with the festival started by local peach farmers in 1951, and event that is the longest-running agricultural festival in the state.
Less than 24 hours after the end of the event, Ruston city officials said they were pleased with the feedback they received and are cautiously optimistic that this year’s event will top last year’s in regards to both attendance and economic impact.
“The feedback we received from so many people was that it was their favorite Peach Festival yet,” said Experience Ruston Marketing Director Tori Davis. “Now we joke internally about whether they just say that because they know us, but we did get a lot of great feedback.
“I really haven’t heard anything negative. I know we will receive comments on social media. Not everyone is going to love everything.”
“I thought it was an incredible weekend,” said Ruston Mayor Ronny Walker. “We had incredible crowds. It was a good atmosphere all the way around.”
Davis said she felt one of the positive changes to this year’s event was how spread out many aspects of the festival was in regards to its geographical footprint.
“We tried to allow for better traffic flow,” said Davis. “I never felt like there was a time on Park Avenue where it felt like you were stuck. We did some very intentional things to make sure we had some additional egresses for people to walk in and out of. We made that East Park Avenue more of a passway with tables and chairs for smaller vendors.
“We just tried to give everything a little bit more room to breathe. There was just more room to walk around and browse which I think everyone responded positively to.”
One of the new additions to the festival this year was the drone show on Saturday night.
“I think everyone loved the drone show,” said Davis. “They thought that was cool. We had an incredible crowd out there for that.”
Davis said they won’t know definitive attendance numbers until later in the week and economic impact numbers until sometime in July.
“By Tuesday or Wednesday, we sit down and look at all the numbers from all the gates,” said Davis. “We will talk to our vendors and get feedback anecdotally from them.”
The City and CVB are working with the Louisiana Tech Economic Department in order to get a more accurate economic impact total for the festival.
“We did a survey this year, and we will post it on social media,” said Davis. “We will be able to take that plus the sales tax numbers and occupancy numbers and get a more accurate economic impact number probably sometime in July.”
The 2024 Peach Festival saw approximately 27,000 attend while the economic impact was $1.6 million. Davis is hopeful that this year’s event will surpass both of those figures.
“That’s where I get nervous because I was just around Railroad Park (Saturday),” said Davis. “But from what I’ve heard and anecdotally, it felt bigger. There was never a lull. It was consistent all day from the start to the end.”
Walker credited numerous city and parish departments for the festival’s success.
“I want to credit Amanda Carrier and Tori Davis with Experience Ruston,” said Walker. “Then Lauren Dowden with our Mainstreet. For someone who came on board about six weeks ago, she did an incredible job with the entire festival.
“And then all of the departments with the city of Ruston should get kudos. We had people working as far as police, fire, EMT, electrical, water, sewer … you name it. We had people out there working hard. People forget about all the behind the scenes work that goes on to put on an event of this magnitude.
“So many of these people were out until about 2 a.m. (Sunday) cleaning up and tearing things down. This is always a true team effort.”
