A church and the Blue Ridge community will host an Independence Day celebration with its inaugural festival.
Locust Hill Baptist Church will entertain the Red, White & Blue Ridge Family & Community Festival on Saturday, July 1, at 6:30 p.m.
“We wanted to bring this type of event to the Blue Ridge area to celebrate faith, family and freedom and bring our community together in fellowship and fun,” said C. Jason Farr, associate pastor at Locust Hill Baptist Church.
“The Blue Ridge community is a special place to live and there's currently not an event of this type in our area without going to Greenville or Greer. We certainly support those local events and don't want to compete with them, but we really want to give the people of the Blue Ridge community an event they can enjoy and call their own.”
It will precede Greenville and Spartanburg’s traditional July 4 festivals. Greer’s celebration is June 24.
The Blue Ridge festival will feature a variety of events:
• BBQ dinner ($6 adults, $4 children, ages 3 and under free)
• Touch-a-Truck featuring fire trucks, the Greenville County SWAT and K-9 Units, construction tractors and farm equipment.
• Bloodmobile on site for donations
• Music entertainment, begins 7:30 p.m.
• Fireworks begin at 9:30 p.m.
Food and beverages will be available for purchase.
Farr said the festival’s name came to him two years ago, when he became a staff member of the church.
“Anytime you have an event of this type, you want to give it a ‘catchy’ name or title,” Farr said. “With so many nearby cities and groups sponsoring similar events, I felt we needed something to identify our purpose and goal.
“Since we are located right in the heart of the Blue Ridge community, it seemed only natural to title this event Red, White & Blue Ridge,” Farr said.
The festival will take place on the church property, 5534 Locust Hill Road. Attendees are asked to bring bag chairs and lawn chairs.
More information is available by calling the church office at 864-895-1771.