Hillsboro Summerfest has it all
The Hillsboro Summerfest will take place from July 9 to July 12. According to the festival chair and creative director, Katherine Charrette, the celebration has been going on in one form or another for 36 years, offering carnival rides, music and community events to raise money for Hillsborough’s Fire Department and in recent years the Lions Club.
”It’s been a few different things over the years,” she said. “We were originally the Fireman’s Muster, so they would get together and compete, and it’s really grown since then. We were the Balloon Fest for a long time, and we’ve recently rebranded in the past seven years as the Hillsboro Summerfest, so we could kind of broaden our scope a little bit.”
“Our proceeds go to the firefighters,” Charrette said, “and their association, which provides lots of medical equipment.and materials that we need. It also splits with the other partner we have, which is the Lions Club. They provide lots of free meals for senior citizens. They do lunches with kids and students at the school. They provide eyewear. We’re completely nonprofit and our goal is to get money from this festival into the pockets of other nonprofits.”
Charrette said that aside from raising money for good causes the goal of Summerfest is to provide affordable entertainment.
“We really try to provide as much free stuff as we possibly can,” she said, “in order to have people not spending a ton of money and be able to really enjoy themselves without a huge price ticket. [What you see] all depends on the day that you show up. If you show up on Thursday, you’re going to see kids and teens running around everywhere, going on all the rides as many times in a row as they can. If you were to show up on Saturday, you could see a 12-foot-tall butterfly, a strongman performance by two-time world record holder Mighty Mike — he’s coming here from Nova Scotia to perform for us — we have stilt walkers, we have a long and very good fireworks show. We have a magic show. We have an RC truck crawler meet-up on Sunday this year — we have a truck that dumps off a bunch of rocks and you can take any kind of RC vehicle that you would like and you’ll be able to just kind of get tips and tricks from other RC enthusiasts … it’s really just about RC vehicles meeting up and learning from one another. And we are doing a giveaway for like a $300 RC crawler truck, which is like … a very tiny version of a lifted Toyota Tacoma.”
Another high point of this year’s Summerfest will be a 5K road race, Charette said.
“We have one of the most beautiful 5K courses in the world. Our route goes along our river and over a beautiful, very old bridge. So that’s a really unique experience.” Another not-to-be-missed event that has become a yearly tradition, she said, is the Women’s Skillet Toss. “All of the proceeds for that go to women’s heart health,” she said. “And this is exactly what it sounds like, which is hucking a skillet as far as you possibly can — only underhand, no overhand. And this year we have added a Men’s Marshmallow Long Drive so we can provide something for men as well. The money raised from that will raise money for men’s mental health.” The Long Drive is golf-oriented, Charette said. “You take your driver and hit a ball as far as you can, only we’ll be using marshmallows because mental health is messy sometimes.”
The Hillsboro Summerfest
When: Thursday, July 9, from 6 to 10 p.m.; Friday, July 10, from 5 to 11 p.m.; Saturday, July 11, from 2 to 11 p.m.; and Sunday, July 12, from noon to 5 p.m.
Where: Hillsborough Fair Grounds on Henniker Street in Hillsborough.
More: hillsborosummerfest.com