The small community of Maggie Valley, North Carolina, is gearing up for a big celebration. The inaugural Smoky Mountain Elk Fest will celebrate elk, conservation and the outdoors on Friday, September 13-14 at the Maggie Valley Festival Grounds.
The gathering will include an array of family-friendly activities including demonstrations, seminars, food, an elk calling contest, live music and much more. The focus will be on elk and helping to ensure the future of the herd restored to its historic Smoky Mountain range in 2001, assisted in part by the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.
“There’s a lot of excitement about it already,” Collins said. “We’ve gotten a lot of phone calls, and when we’re out in the community people are asking about it and getting excited about it,” Lynn Collins, Haywood County Tourism Development Authority director, told The Mountaineer. “The ultimate goal is to create a fund that will go through to the herd through the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation to service habitat and elk programs in Haywood County and the Qualla Boundary. We’d like to come out of this with a nice little contribution to get that fund opened up.”
(Photo source: Shannon Silva)