Monday, March 15, 2010
Gearing Up For "The Big One"
If you've followed the blog at all much lately, you've seen that this is the 145th anniversary year for many of the larger Civil War battles in North Carolina. This weekend is the biggest of them all, the Battle of Bentonville. This event commands the most resources of any event our Division ever organizes. It pulls in staff from literally all over the state, as well as multitudes of volunteers to handle every imaginable task. I won't bore you with all the minutiae, but suffice it to say that this event becomes the focus of the majority of the Division for the better part of a month. There are some staff who will be at Bentonville more days and longer hours than I will be, but this year marks my heaviest involvement ever in this event. I will be in charge of all black powder safety and weapons inspections, as well as on field safety during the battle scenarios. I will be at Bentonville on Wednesday for school day and media day, then will return first thing Friday morning and remain there until the show is over late Sunday afternoon. The weekend will definitely be a busy one with 3,500 reenactors and approximately 30,000 spectators. Should be interesting if nothing else.
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4 comments:
Be safe my friend, you know that some of those folks ain't quite right in the head...........-grin-
I was there, having driven from Illinois to visit family in Goldsboro and to attend the re-enactment.
Way too many lines for food (just two vendors that I could see) and bathrooms. Great selection of vendors.
My brother and I joined the many people leaving the battle site after ten minutes because we just couldn't see it.
For the 150th, perhaps choose a site which affords better viewing.
Impressive, though. I've never seen so many re-enactors and was especially happy to see all the Scouts there.
Old B-Runner
A group of us drove up from Jacksonville to spend the weekend up there for the big show. It was fantastic! I'm just glad I decided to make the switch from my trusty film camera to digital. I ended up taking over 500 photos that weekend. I hate to think how much I would have spent on film and developing if I had used film! I just wanted to thank you, the department, and everyone else involved for putting on such a great weekend. What was the final count of reenactors and spectators that came out?
The final counts were impressive. There were between 3500 and 3700 reenactors, and the visitor count for both days combined was estimated at 50,000. Thanks to you guys for coming out and supporting the event. We have tried over the years to alleviate some of the issues such as long lines, poor sight lines on the battlefield, and so forth. We've done good in some areas and are still working on others.
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