Organizers of the Hearts of Gold Cantaloupe Festival and Country Fair are hard at work getting all the plans in place for this year’s 35th Annual event which will be held August 27 – 29. The Festival Committee met this week in their regular meeting and walked the footprint out at the fairgrounds, looking at a preliminary plan to meet the challenges of parking around the construction site of the Rafter 3C Civic Center building.
“One of the challenges for the festival this year is the fact that they’re building the 3C Center in the parking lot,” said Zip Upham, long-time Chairman of the festival committee. “The 3C Center is going to be a phenomenal addition, next year we may be able to do the entire event inside the new building, except the carnival which would still be outside.” He said there will be plenty of room in the new facility for all the vendors and the stage acts.
For several years there has been discussion about trying to get the state fair in Fallon and Upham says the 3C Center “gets us closer to being the Northern Nevada State fair.”
According to Upham, one of the challenges with the festival this year is on Saturday morning the Pop Warner football league is holding their main, regional event with teams from the whole Northern Nevada league in Fallon at the Pop Warner fields which are located just south of Miners Road and the vaccination facility. That will eat into the parking situation for most of Saturday. The county is making the vaccination area available to the festival for the overflow parking which will fill fast because the main parking area in front of the multi-purpose building is so small now due to the 3C construction site. The overflow parking will be accessible from Sheckler Road onto Miners Road near the Tennis Courts and off Highway 95 onto Miners Road just south of town.
“The parking area that is overflow for the festival is the graded lot that is south of Miners Road that is currently being used for vaccinations and COVID testing,” said Upham. “It is the same size as the regular fairground parking lot, so we actually gain parking, its just farther away from the entrance to the festival.”
The plan at this point is to create an access road from the overflow lot across Miners Road that will run on the west side of the construction site all the way north to the main lot and deliver people using people-mover shuttles and golf carts to the main gate which will be located at the gate of the multi-purpose building. “We are working on having publicity posters of the 3C Center schematics displayed on the fence so as people are traveling from the parking lot to the gate, they get the chance to see the plans for the new facility,” said Upham. He also said the committee is working with the county to get the parking areas striped so that it is easier for people to keep the parking orderly and safe. The county is also letting the committee use the huts from the vaccine facility in the entrance way to use as the ticketing booths.
“This is actually a very nice parking area once we get it striped and organized,” said Upham. “It’s rally one of those things that is expectation management – people may think they can’t park that far away, but we will make it easy for them. What I don’t want people to think is that they can park on Sheckler Road, the Sheriff will not let you do that. They can park in all these spaces off Miners Road, the pool area, and the main parking lot.” Organizers do not want anyone parking at the High School because there are no traffic controls across Sheckler which is highly travelled and fairly dangerous for pedestrians to try to navigate.
The festival begins on Friday at 1:00 p.m. and closes at midnight, Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to midnight, and Sunday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The committee members are
“Tickets are available online and rather than standing in line for tickets people should get their tickets ahead of time,” said Upham. Ticket are available at falloncantaloupefestival.ticketspice.com
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