There are plenty of ways to experience Appalachian culture in Scott County, but few bring the past to life quite like the annual Heritage Festival at the Museum of Scott County.
Held each year on the last Saturday of September on the campus of Scott High School in Huntsville, the Heritage Festival transforms the museum grounds into a celebration of the skills, sounds and traditions that helped shape life on the Cumberland Plateau.
The festival will return Saturday, Sept. 26, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission and parking are free.
At the heart of the festival are the traditional craftsmen and demonstrators who give visitors a glimpse of everyday life in Appalachia generations ago. Blacksmithing, rifle making, flint knapping, frontier cooking, sorghum making, weaving and apple butter making are among the skills that have traditionally been demonstrated during the festival.
Throughout the day, bluegrass music adds a soundtrack fitting for the setting, while food and craft vendors give visitors plenty of reasons to linger.
But the setting itself is perhaps the festival’s biggest attraction.
The Museum of Scott County isn’t an ordinary museum. Located on the Scott High School campus, it is a one-of-a-kind project built, operated and maintained by students. What began with a single building has grown into a sprawling complex featuring more than a dozen log and stone structures and thousands of artifacts tracing Scott County’s history from prehistoric times through the modern era.
During the Heritage Festival, those museum grounds become a living history classroom.
Visitors can wander among historic structures, watch craftsmen practice skills once essential to survival in the mountains, and see Scott High students demonstrate skills learned through classes associated with the museum project.
The experience offers something increasingly difficult to find: history that can be seen, heard and experienced rather than simply read about.
The museum complex also includes the USS Tennessee Battleship Memorial Museum, home to what the museum describes as the nation’s largest collection of memorabilia associated with the USS Tennessee. The battleship survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and later fought extensively across the Pacific during World War II.
For visitors planning an autumn trip to Scott County, the Heritage Festival also arrives at an ideal time of year. Late September signals the beginning of fall on the Cumberland Plateau, when cooler mornings begin returning to the mountains and the first hints of autumn appear in the forests.
That makes the festival an easy addition to a weekend spent exploring the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area, Historic Rugby, the Cumberland Mountains or other attractions throughout Scott County.
More than anything, however, the Heritage Festival is about preserving a culture.
The crafts being demonstrated, the music being played and the buildings standing on the museum grounds tell the story of generations who made their lives in these mountains. For one Saturday each September, those traditions aren’t simply preserved behind glass.
They come alive again.
