The Marathon Maple Festival and Pageant

The Maple Festival and Pageant started in 1971. A group of more prominent people in the community realized that something should be done to try and promote the town, at the time things were kind of dying out in town; the milk plant closed, we used to have a lot of jobs in manufacturing and business in Marathon, and around then is when it started to die out. So, they wanted to do something to "put us on the map" and someone had heard of the Maple Festival that was held in Burton, Ohio. Five people went and talked to the people who organized it came back and started up a committee on it. The first Maple Festival was a nice spring weekend, and a lot of people came, so many that all the places with food ran out the first day. I have been told you couldn't even get into town from the four corners because it was so crowded. They had crafts and things in the highschool in the classrooms, and they constructed a makeshift sugar shack on Lovel Field because the one we have now wasn't built for a while. There were a lot of businesses on mainstreet that had various things, and all the churches had food and other stuff. There was a pancake breakfast in the school and the Masons had a buffet. The Methodist Church had a chicken barbecue like they have now. Also, the was no civic center or maple museum or any of those other building on Lovel Field, but there was stuff in the firehouse. And as I stated earlier, they ran out of food on the first day and everyone had to go back home and make more, and I was told everyone was pretty tired and surprised so many people came. The Pageant was also taken from Burton, and there was a comittee for that as well. I was told it hasn't really changed much except there is more talent involved, which I guess means the dancing and singing that now takes place at the current Pageants. The first Marathon Maple Festival Queen was a young lady by the name of Sarah Smith.