Frisco Festival Turns 30; New Events Planned

ROGERS -- When the first Frisco Festival was held in 1984 there were 17,469 people living in Rogers. The festival and the city have changed during the past 30 years.

The festival is the largest annual event downtown and draws about 20,000 people each year. The festival wasn't always such a big event, costing about $75,000 to stage, said Jenny Harmon, Main Street Rogers director who started Frisco Festival.

This year's festival will open at 5 p.m. Friday and runs all day Saturday.

"We probably drew crowds of about 1,500 people, which was a lot for our size town," Harmon said of the early years. "At the beginning it was more of a community celebration with mostly community people volunteering and attending."

The focus of the first festivals was on children, with games, races and school clubs, Harmon said.

"We had things like the Tired Iron folks displaying old farm equipment, a children's area of games," she said. "It was also an opportunity for the Rogers High School clubs to raise money selling cookies or items the club members made."

There were bed races with a person in a bed being pushed by four people in costumes and a chili cook-off. There was no carnival the first few years, Harmon said.

"It was a lot of fun," she said. "It was a family event. We did have music at the first festival as I recall, although we didn't have the nice Frisco stage then. We would get someone to park a flatbed trailer downtown and that was our stage for many years. I think the first group that played at the festival was named Joe and the Hardtops or something like that."

Main Street Rogers added new events to the festival and dropped others that weren't popular. Street theater was part of the festival over the years. Harmon said.

"One year we made up a story about a big diamond being in the caboose," she said. "The robbers were dressed like mobsters in 1930 era movie. My brother (John Mack) was dressed all in black with a fedora hat. He carried our mother's old violin case for an added mobster's touch. It was great fun."

Another year a women was kidnapped from the train by men dressed as cowboys on horseback.

"We never really rehearsed the kidnapping. We just talked about it, but it played well when the woman was removed from the train and taken away on the back of a horse as the cowboys fired their pistols as they rode away," Harmon said with a laugh.

By the time Marge Wolf became Main Street Rogers director in 2001 the festival had grown considerably.

"A carnival had been added to the festival a few years before I became director," Wolf said. "We paid for the carnival so all the rides were free. We increased the number of rides when it became financially possible. We also had the fireman muster, Whitey chicken cooking in Frisco Park, along with craft and food vendor booths, and of course games and races for children."

The basic idea of Frisco Festival, to bring people downtown, hasn't changed, Wolf said.

Frisco Festival officials said there will be a focus on the event's 30th anniversary when the festival kicks off Friday.

"We will honor the 30th anniversary with the '80s cover band Members Only on Friday night, and some of the speakers will likely talk about the long history of the event. Frisco Festival is probably the longest running downtown event in this area. Other festivals have come and gone, but this event gets bigger every year," said Dana Mather, Main Street Rogers director.

The carnival will be slightly bigger this year with a few additional rides, Mather said. About two years ago Main Street Rogers officials determined it was too costly for the organization to pay for the carnival.

"The carnival owner charges for the rides and gives a percentage of the profits to Main Street," Mather said. "That way we can make a little money to continue to stage Frisco Festival and the other events we have downtown.

"We're spreading out the carnival a little more this year, but the big Ferris wheel will still have its place at First and Cherry streets, so the riders can see downtown from the top of the wheel."