JOHNSTON, S.C. – Families from throughout the towns of Johnston, Trenton and Edgefield were undiscouraged by Saturday morning’s showers, still gathering along Calhoun Street in Johnston’s downtown for the town’s 38th annual Peach Blossom Festival.
Each year the fair, which celebrates the Edgefield County burg’s peach farming industry, kicks off at about 9 a.m., with a host of vendors lining up along Calhoun—the main street that becomes S.C. State Hwy. 23—hawking their wares, and locals and visitors marshaling themselves down the sidewalks in anticipation of the parade about an hour in.
Saturday was no different, as the procession started at 10:30 a.m. Both spectators and participants brandished umbrellas, and kids ran toward the middle of the street to catch candy flying from the floats.
The Johnston Jaycees launched the first Peach Blossom Festival in spring of 1987, itself a revival of the Ridge Peach Blossom Festival organized in March of 1947 by the Jaycees and the Johnston Lions Club.
That first iteration of the event, which drew some 3,000 attendees, began with a parade and concluded with then-South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond crowning Penny Jennings as “Queen of the Festival.”
Although the festivities brought crowds upwards of 10,000 to Johnston by 1950, volunteers and accommodation dwindled, and the event was abandoned for nearly four decades.
In 2008 the Johnston Development Corporation, a local tourism and economic development non-profit, took up the mantle of organizing the festival, adding arts, crafts, rides and even a Saturday night dance by 2010.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
