BAINBRIDGE — One of southern Ohio’s best-known autumn traditions gets under way Thursday evening, Oct. 15, in downtown Bainbridge, where the Fall Festival of Leaves opens with a parade and ribbon cutting at 7 p.m., followed by the festival’s scholarship queen pageant at 8 p.m. at the historic Paxton Theatre.
Admission to the pageant is $5, and families who cannot make it to the theatre in person can watch the crowning live, with the pageant streaming on Litter Media’s Facebook page and YouTube channel. The Thursday night events serve as the formal kickoff to the festival’s main weekend.
The festival itself runs Friday through Sunday, Oct. 16-18, in downtown Bainbridge along U.S. Route 50 in Ross County, and admission to the festival grounds is free. Organizers bill the weekend as a celebration of the fall color in the hills and valleys around the village, which draws visitors from across southern Ohio each October.
The queen pageant is a scholarship competition, not just a crown. The queen and her court receive scholarships ranging from $200 to $1,000, and contestants, ages 15 to 18, come from ten area school districts: Paint Valley, Adena, Huntington, Unioto, Chillicothe, Zane Trace, Southeastern, Greenfield, Hillsboro and Western.
The pageant carries a memorial dedication as well. It is held in honor and memory of Loraine Campbell Granger, a festival committee member and a devoted Paint Valley teacher who died in 2003 and is remembered by the community each year as a new court is chosen.
Across the weekend, the festival schedule mixes small-town staples with distinctly Appalachian Ohio touches: parades, flea markets and a midway, a pedal tractor pull, arts and crafts vendors, a 5K run, a log sawing contest and an antique tractor show, plus self-guided scenic tours for visitors who want to see the color on the back roads around Bainbridge.
For Bainbridge businesses, the festival weekend is one of the biggest of the year, bringing outside visitors into a village of only a few hundred residents and filling shops, food stands and sidewalks along the main route through town. Local sponsors also feed the pageant contestants during their Sunday rehearsals, a sign of how much of the event runs on hometown support.
Anyone heading to Bainbridge Thursday night should plan to arrive early for the 7 p.m. parade and ribbon cutting, as downtown fills quickly before the pageant. After Thursday’s crowning, the new queen and court will preside over the full festival weekend, Oct. 16-18.
