Rain Or Shine, Festival Is Fun!

    This year’s Fort Sisseton Historic Festival was marked by a day of great weather and another wet and windy one. Still, last weekend’s event brought out plenty of visitors who enjoyed three days of historically-themed fun.
    Estimated attendance was around 9,000 people this year, a figure close to last year’s number. The bulk of the visitors attended on Saturday, when the weather was nearly perfect for the event. Saturday night and Sunday morning brought rainy and windy conditions that forced some vendors to pull up stakes early.
    Still, the weekend was viewed as a success with most activities going over very well. The chuckwagon meal fundraiser Friday night was a sellout. Close to 700 people attended the Britton Community Theatre’s melodrama throughout the weekend. The grand march and military ball were the best attended they have ever been. 
    New activities were very well received. The 1880s cricket game drew interested young people and was a fun novelty. The search for “Annie,” another fundraiser was successful as well. The Fort Commission raised around $500 as people searched for the dummy throughout the festival, adorning her with beads to enter for a drawing. 
    Another great new event was the mounted shooting competition. The Buckhorn Rodeo Association sponsored the Cowboy Mounted Shooting. “We teamed with the Wild Rice Peace Makers out of Minnesota to bring this jackpot shoot together,” said Buckhorn Rodeo Association’s Susan Smith. “We were thrilled to have 19 contestants sign up for this event.”
    There were 3 stages to the pistol shooting which all paid out separately. Then there was also a shotgun event where riders would shoot white balloons with their pistol and then red balloons with their rifle. They also had a rifle event which was much the same where they would shoot white balloons with their pistol and red balloons with their rifle. Each event had ten balloons that the contestants had to shoot while also following a pattern. There were penalties added to contestant times if they missed a balloon.
    Competition results- Stage 1: 1st – Katie Pulford, 2nd – Randy Featherhuff, 3rd – Sam Bishop. Stage 2: 1st – Liza Manikowski, 2nd – Sam Bishop, 3rd – Cord Nolte. Stage 3: 1st – Lakken Wall, 2nd – Ann Mundt, 3rd – Cord Nolte. Rifle: 1st – Katie Pulford, 2nd – Liza Manikowski. Shotgun: 1st – Katie Pulford, 2nd – Frank Wall, 3rd – Ryan Carlson, 4th – Sara Herrmann.
    Festival and Buckhorn officials hope to bring back the shooting competition next year. 
    Be sure to check Fort Sisseton’s Facebook page for other fun events throughout the summer.