Towsontown Spring Festival celebrates 54 years

The Towsontown Spring Festival celebrated 54 years as families and friends flocked together to enjoy the festival’s golden decade on May 5-6.

The two-day festival stretched across Chesapeake, Pennsylvania, Washington and Baltimore Avenues. Carnival rides, games, face painting, live music, beer gardens and food trucks were among the highlights.

“This event was the biggest event we’ve had in the last eight years,” said Towson Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Nancy Hafford. “The music was absolutely amazing. We probably had 30 different food trucks. All kinds of food trucks with anything you could think of. There was so much positive energy. No incidents happened.”

That planning and brainstorming starts a week after the previous year’s festival ends. Hafford worked 18 days straight leading up to the big day.

“We start planning the following year’s festival to have time to discuss what we liked, disliked and if there are somethings that just don’t work,” said Hafford, “and some great things happened. We moved the stage closer to where people gathered, and that made a great difference.”

More than 200 vendors were on hand selling art, jewelry and other handmade items. In addition to games, there was a farm yard area for kids, including a petting zoo where the storytellers will talk about the animals.

Over 200,000 people attended the festival, and an estimate of $50,000 to $75,000 was raised for to help the community including funding jobs, according to Hafford.

“We work on community clean up,” said Hafford. “We pay people to go through the community and pick up trash and help with the upkeep. We pay for advertising and promotion for our community, and host breakfast meetings for business community members to update them about things happening in Towson. "