Organizers try to perk up Dos Palos’ traditional Cotton Festival
The Dos Palos Lions Club is putting on its annual Cotton Festival starting Thursday, and organizers hope to see a boost in attendance.
The Cotton Festival is a community tradition that goes back decades, said Donald Vincent, Dos Palos Lions Club president and event organizer. The festival will include carnival rides and games, live music, a softball tournament, a beer garden and rib dinners, among dozens of other food options, Vincent said.
This year’s event will take place at O’Banion Park, 931 Center Ave. The festival will run from 5 p.m to midnight on Thursday and Friday and from noon to midnight on Saturday and Sunday.
Vincent said the event started as a community fair in various locations around town before moving to O’Banion Park in the early 1990s and receiving the name “Cotton Festival,” after the area’s most popular crop at the time.
The event serves as a fundraiser for the club, which has taken care of O’Banion Park since 1994, Vincent said.
He expects this week’s festival to draw a couple of thousand attendees, but there has been a decline in the turnout the past five years.
“It used to be really big,” Vincent said. “We used to have up to 20 softball teams for the tournament. Now we’re lucky if we have eight or 10.”
He said the festival’s declining popularity could be partly due to the area’s dwindling economy.
“People struggle for jobs out here, and they move away,” he said.
Last year, the festival fell on a weekend when high school and youth sports teams played out of town, and that also hurt the event’s attendance. That won’t be the case this year, Vincent said, noting Dos Palos High School does not have a football game this weekend.
Chris Coffey, the festival’s ride supervisor who was helping set up Wednesday afternoon, said some of the most popular attractions usually include Crazy Surf and Rock-O-Plane, a Ferris wheel-type carnival ride. Eight rides and about 20 vendor booths were expected to be set up before Thursday, he said.
The Cotton Festival will include a Miss Dos Palos pageant at 6 p.m. Thursday and a parade at 6 p.m. Friday.
Vincent said he doesn’t like to think of the Cotton Festival as a dying tradition, and he knows people would like to see new and more exciting attractions. But in order for the Lions Club to be able to invest in next year’s festival, attendance at this year’s must surpass expectations.
“There’s not a lot to do in our community,” he said. “We’re hoping for a good crowd this year.”
This story was originally published September 9, 2015 at 7:15 PM with the headline "Organizers try to perk up Dos Palos’ traditional Cotton Festival."