A picture of the Pumpkin tower in the 2007 issue of the Equinox. Photographer unknown
The Pumpkin Festival of 2007 was met with a warm reception and warm weather. The festival environment was a great opportunity from local businesses, the city community, as well as the student community. The atmosphere and the environment was positive and the only issue that occurred were people getting separated from each other.
- 3,000 college students came out to carve pumpkins
- Over 2,000 cars stretching to 3 lots
Chouinard, Eric. “Keene Pumped For Another Try.” The Equinox, 25 October 2007
Over the years from 1991 to 2007 the Pumpkin Festival has attracted from people from all over the northeast. Growing from 1,628, lit jack-o lanterns to the world record in 2003 of 28,952. The Pumpkin Festival now has competition with the growing Boston Pumpkin Festival which began in 2003. The Boston Pumpkin Festival began breaking the Keene record because they had a larger budget and more room for the festival. The Keene Pumpkin Fest became a competition against metropolitan Boston. The small town versus the largest city in the region.
- ” The first year the coordinators put the pumpkins on the gazebo… Three scaffolding towers were used last year in the event and were covered in Pumpkins “
Reynolds, Chris. “Festival has Roots in Downtown Commerce and Community Involvement.” The Equinox, 2007
This article informs of the abundance of help from the neighboring school around the area, such as Keene High school, Monadnock Regional high school, and Keene State college coming together and helping to clean up. The clean up process could take up to 12 to 14 hours on that Sunday of the pumpkin festival.
Robertson, Megan. “Young and old, area volunteers are key in cleaning up pumpkin mess.” 25 October 2007