Town Crier Articles

Photographer unknown, 2022 Gloucester Daffodil Festival website

 

A few years ago, my wife and I were out for a Sunday drive, and we decided to go to Gloucester for a simple reason: We had never been there before. Imagine our (welcomed) surprise to discover that it was Daffodil Festival weekend.

 

The streets were filled with locals and tourists. There were beautiful daffodils everywhere the eye could see. Shops on Main Street were open and looked to be doing a robust business. There were food trucks, music, lots of little kids and their parents – we even purchased a new tag for our dog from a street vendor.

 

The festival returns this year for one weekend, April 2 and 3. Things get started with a parade at 10 a.m. on Saturday. On the Main Street stage, the group Whiskey Rebellion will play from noon to 5. Sunday’s featured musical group is Soul Expression, which will perform from 12:45 to 5.

 

Since there is very limited parking in town, you can drive to Gloucester High School and ride the shuttle into town for $5.

 

The history of daffodils in Gloucester, wrote Carol Ray in 1991, a work that was updated by Denise Rhea Carter 19 years later, is “almost as old as Gloucester County itself.” Early settlers brought with them daffodil bulbs that they planted in what turned out to be ideal weather and soil for them to flourish.

 

Around 1890, a woman named Eleanor Linthicum Smith first saw the commercial potential of daffodils. She developed a bed of the flowers and paid children 10 cents per hundred to pick them. The flowers were packed and shipped to Baltimore.

 

At its peak, Gloucester was known as “the Daffodil Capital of America.” After a decline, in 1938 the first daffodil tour was proposed by the Gloucester Rotary Club and the local newspaper, the Gazette-Journal. It was such a success that a year later a festival was added to the tour, along with a queen and her court.

 

Most, if not all, of the events attached to the festival are free and open to the public. For more information, visit this website https://daffodilfestivalva.org/.