Tellico Plains, Tenn. – Thousands of spectators converged on Tellico Plains on Saturday, for the sixth annual Cherohala Skyway Festival.
The event is a fundraiser for the Charles Hall Museum of History & Heritage, and other organizations in the Tellico Plains area.
Charles Hall was a local historian, community organizer and elected official. His daughter, Pam Hall Mathews, helped start the annual festival as a way to carry on her father’s legacy and to support the museum he founded. She is also president of the Hall Museum Historical Society.
The biggest event of the year in Tellico Plains, Mathews was busy Saturday taking care of loose ends, as well as hosting visits by her three children and their children during the festival weekend.
The festival started under one tent in 2016 with the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Cherohala Skyway, which connects Tellico Plains, Tenn., with Graham County near Robbinsville. It skipped one year because of COVID-19, but returned last year.
By Saturday, the festival sprawled in and around the museum complex – and across the creek – with live music and dozens of vendors, crafts, food and activities for children and adults.
Mathews said there is no way to formally track the number of visitors. Entry to the festival was free, although there was a $5 charge for nearby parking.
By mid-Saturday afternoon, long lines were at some vendors’ booths and getting through the crowds took patience, especially crossing a foot bridge across the creek from one side of the festival to the other. Live music events (bluegrass is a Tellico Plains-tradition, Mathews said) drew standing-room-only crowds.
Booths included juried arts and crafts, living history presentations, ax throwing, pumpkin and face painting, horse-drawn wagon rides, a petting zoo, kids train rides, tractor-pulled hay rides, bounce houses, and a sawdust dig for cash and treasures.