Music festival returns after multiyear hiatus

A San Lorenzo Valley music festival that was discontinued in 1996 after an 18-year run is back on the docket for the summer.
The Valley Women’s Club announced last week that the Redwood Mountains Faire is scheduled for June 5 on the expansive grounds of Roaring Camp Railroads in Felton, after previous festivals at Highlands Park in Ben Lomond.
“(Roaring Camp Owner) Georgiana Clark has been especially generous with us,” organizer Julie Hendriks said. “She really wants to be more involved in the community. She wants to host more community events.”
The new space has large open fields and a significant space for parking, something Highlands lacks, Hendriks said. In the final year of the fair at Highlands, bus rentals cost about $9,000 and significantly ate into the profits of the event.
“I think it was more pain than profit,” Hendriks said.
Much of the anticipated profits will be distributed to the nonprofit groups that volunteer at the fair.
The fair was revived for 2010 after Hendriks discussed the prospect with the VWC board of directors, who agreed to sponsor it.
“We’re hoping to make it once again a local community event,” she said. “The last few years at Highlands, there were a lot of people coming from over the hill.”
The annual festival began in 1978 and ran each year for 18 years before it became too expensive to continue. In its final year, the two-day fair at Highlands Park in Ben Lomond cost $100,000 while generating only $106,000 in revenue. The $6,000 profit, split between 40 groups, was simply not worth the time and effort.
Next year’s June 5 fair will be a one-day event, incorporating local bands and musicians on two stages and featuring booths with exclusively local artists, food vendors and craftspeople.
Hendriks has formed a steering committee of nearly a dozen community members to look at all phases of the festival, from food to finances and transportation and security.
“I’m relying on all those wonderful people to fill in the blanks,” Hendriks said.
Organizers are also looking for nonprofits that might not have existed or taken part in the fair in previous years to join the group. Group representatives can e-mail

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or call 338-6570 to learn more.
“Everybody I talk to, they just get really excited,” Hendriks said.