The annual Tent City Days event starts this evening with events at the Elks Lodge and Legion Hall.
The event is a perennial institution in Wrangell, and features window displays by local businesses as well as a host of events designed to hit the sweet spot between kid-friendly events and events for those simply young at heart.
Among the standout new events this year are Friday’s Turkey Shoot dice roll at 4 p.m. Saturday at the Elks Lodge, the Howdy Doody Outhouse 10k Fun run 9 a.m. Saturday at City Park, sponsored by Beasts of Southeast and chaired by Lucy Robinson, two fishing competitions, and gold panning and trapping exhibits 2 p.m. Saturday at the City Dock. Details were still coming together this week, and organizers said the Coast Guard was still uncertain to show, said Penny Allen, who has organized the event for the last eight years.
Another new event is actually somewhat old. The Madame Fifi Fashion Show, set for 5:30 p.m. at the Elks Club, was a Tent City contribution of the Shady Ladies for many years. Organizers said they intended to recapture the event’s spirit while retooling some of the particulars for this year’s revival.
“I used to participate when I was younger,” said Solvay Bakke, who led this year’s revival, and participated in her first show when she was just five or six years old. “My aunt used to make me dresses. All of us would participate and dress up, and it was just something fun for us and for the locals to get together and do together.”
This year’s competition will feature different categories designed to accommodate women who might not necessarily identify only with lace garments and corsets.
Tent City Days will also feature bed races along Front Street Saturday at 3 p.m.
The festival is intended to commemorate the days in the 1800s when Wrangell played an active role in both the Southeast Alaska gold rush (which led to the founding of Juneau) and the Klondike gold rush (which led to the founding of Fairbanks), according to Allen.
“It’s a celebration of the gold rush era in Wrangell,” she said. “Wrangell used to be a hub. They (prospectors) used to use the Stikine as a gateway for gold.”
In keeping with the Wild West flavor of the rushes themselves, and Wrangell’s somewhat legendary reputation as a wilder part of the Old West, some events are designed to be a bit rowdier than others, like a wet tee shirt and jock competition scheduled for midnight at the Marine Bar, organizers said. However, the festival also features a child-friendly carnival at the Stikine Native Organizations building, as well as kids bowling at the Elks Lodge, replete with horse rides.
Tent City Days starts this evening with Bingo at 7 p.m. at the Legion Hall, and lasts throughout the weekend.
A full list of events is available at the Chamber of Commerce web site: http://www.wrangellcham
ber.org/tent-city-days.htm
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