Knotty Pine GAZETTE - Pioneer Days

This coming weekend October 15-17, 2010 will be Knotty Pine's Pioneer Days Festival. The Festival will be held on the north end of town at the Big Pine National Forest's Visitors Center. There will be folks dressed in early 1800's period costumes, trail foods, as well as a wide variety of displays, maps and charts. There will even be a play area for the kids designed like a stockade-style fort.

Centerpiece for Pioneer Days is a special project planned and directed by high school wood shop teacher Jeff Anderson. Jeff organized the many student and adult volunteers to build a full-sized and fully operational covered wagon. Frenchy DeSalle and his loggers donated the lumber needed for this project. Knotty Pine's blacksmith Jock McIntosh forged all the metal components for the wagon right down to the iron wheel rims. Jock also provided space at his blacksmith shop for the wagon's construction and storage. Skinner McNeil will provide the power for the wagon with his work mules and oxen loaned to Skinner by Mountain Mining Company.

Speakers from State U, as well as several of our own forest rangers will give talks on people and events that played important roles in the growth and development of the western United States. One locally favorite speaker at Pioneer Days will be our own ranger Stumpy Jenkins. Stumpy will be playing the part of Mountain Man Chilkoot. Stumpy will be wearing typical mountain man fringed buckskins and a coonskin cap. Ranger Jenkins will share his knowledge of the often harsh, dangerous and isolated life lived by the hunters, trappers, and explorers of the early 1800s. Chilkoot will tell us what a "rendezvous" was and what it meant to these mountaineers.