The Festival of the Little Hills will once again fill Historic Main Street and the grounds of Frontier Park in downtown St. Charles with shoppers, music lovers and foodie folks as it has nearly every year since 1971.
The festival celebrates the founding of what is now St. Charles by Louis Blanchette, a French-Canadian explorer. The three-day festival now draws 300,000 people to the St. Charles riverfront and features 300 booths selling fine art, crafts, jewelry, clothing, gourmet foods, and the festival foods people love to eat.
For Brent Schulz, vice-chair of the festival and a 20-year board member in the all-volunteer crew, the festival is about connection, community, continuity and growth. “I’ve come to know a number of the vendors over the past years. When we see each other when they’re setting up it’s like a homecoming, and when they leave, I say ‘bye and we’ll see you next year.’ There’s this familiarity and connection that endures year to year,†he says. “One vendor, Hawkins Handcrafted Leather, will celebrate a 50-year run at the festival this summer.â€
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Travis Hawkins is the third generation to continue the business his grandfather Fred Hawkins started when his hobby of working with leather took a serious turn. In 1975, Fred Hawkins first set up a booth to sell the handcrafted leather goods his family sells today. Travis’ aunt, Kim, and his dad, Kirk, will work the booth with him all weekend.
Leah Smith, of Maplewood, says she adds to her collection of glass pumpkins and acorns each year from the Vessel Studio Art booth at the Festival of the Little Hills in St. Charles. Booth vendor Randall Kopchak helps her with a selection in 2022.Â
He’s loved the festival since he was a kid when he could roam the grounds and have adventures. “Now it’s all-hands-on-deck the whole run of the festival. I usually go out at lunchtime to find food to bring it back to the booth and that’s about all I see of the festival.†Travis has seen different items take top sales over the years, but his current top sellers are the handcrafted, hand-dyed and tooled leather belts he makes. He offers a full line of leather goods, but he thinks he has a corner on one item. “I think I’m the only person left in the world making physical check book covers, tooled leather covers,†he says.
Like the vendors, the music schedule features perennial favorites such as the St. Charles Municipal Orchestra, which was founded in 1870. Other music includes country and western, rock, jazz, blues, hip hop, and tribute bands that appeal to a wide range of audience.
One newcomer taking the main stage in Frontier Park Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m., will be The all-lower case spelled name for a high energy band came about in 2022 when three founding members and friends — Austin Shariff, James Merrick and Hannah Wozniak — combined their practice neighborhood (St. Charles) and their love for James Merrick’s first born son (Charles) to make the diminutive saint chuck.
The three met while they were all teaching at the same music school. In April they released a new EP “Acting Like Adults.â€
Artist Joe Bodus of JB Design & Illustration makes his seventh appearance this summer at the show selling his meticulous pencil drawings and prints of historical places, sports teams and landmarks in and around St. Louis. “Everything in this show has to be hand created — there’s no buy-and-resell stuff,†Bodus says. “I do a lot of art fairs, 16 to 20 in a normal year. This is one of my biggest and my most profitable festival. I work it by myself, on Main Street, 16 hours a day, so I don’t get to hear a lot of the great music,†he says. “I plan to keep coming back.
Kids can look forward to making art and crafts at Kids Corner and watching the antics of the performers at Circus Kaput juggling, working with fire, and doing magic tricks, as well as a bounce house and more. There’s even a few entertaining educational things like the reenactors at the Lewis & Clark encampment.
“There will be people portraying Merriweather Lewis and William Clark. They’re always informative and kids seem to enjoy that — they can learn something and have fun at the same time,†Brent Schulz says.
Schulz is looking forward to meeting two newcomers to the festival. “We’re going to have a working blacksmith on site for the first time,†he says, and we’ll have two professional actors playing Daniel and Rebecca Boone who were quite influential in St. Charles. Boone’s Lick Road is named for them and signifies the early transportation route through the Midwest to the West.â€
The annual Festival of the Little Hills in St. Charles brought enjoyable weather, lemonade, crafts, and the crowds to Main Street and the riverfront. Video by Hillary Levin
