The Beginning Years of the Maine Potato Blossom Festival, 1935-1960
2014 Maine Potato Queen Hannah Soutameyer of Mapleton and her court on a float during the 2015 festival parade in Fort Fairfield.
The beginning years of one of the oldest festivals in Maine are hazy, yet there are enough facts and hints to show how the Maine Potato Blossom Festival grew to what it is today—a multi-day, multi-faceted celebration of the state’s potato industry and the blooming Aroostook County potato fields in July.
The first queen, Valeska Ward of Limestone, explained that back in 1935 some local folks held a dinner for area farm workers and potato growers. At the time, Maine was the largest producer of potatoes in the United States.
Her official title was Maine Potato Queen and her crowning took place following the October dinner at Presque Isle’s Northeastland Hotel. Potato industry officials, members of a Boston advertising firm hired to promote Maine, and a New York Times photographer were in attendance.
The Queen’s First Court
Other contestants were Emmaline Clark and Irene Bouchard of Caribou; Gertrude Foster of Fort Fairfield; Roberta Anderson of Presque Isle; and Margaret Hay of Washburn.
Valeska Ward as the Limestone girls’ basketball captain.
Publicity of the queen was expected “to make the Pine Tree State potato crop better known throughout the East,” according to the Presque Isle Star-Herald.
Following the dinner, Valeska posed for photos at the Charles F. Perry farm “seated on a throne with a mountain of potatoes for a background.” She also visited Charles Hussey’s warehouse where she filled a two-peck carton of Top Tater Brand potatoes.
Born in Fort Fairfield, Valeska grew up in Limestone and graduated from there in 1935. Captain of the girls’ undefeated basketball team, she also belonged to the Caribou riding and driving club and drove a tractor many times on her dad’s 200-acre farm.
After high school, Valeska studied at the Burdett Business School in Boston and then returned to Limestone to work at an electrical company. She loved horses, competed in harness races on ice, and married Maynard Lombard of Caribou.
The Real Queen?
There’s some confusion about who was queen in 1936 and 1937. Festival organizers today maintain that Irene Griffeth of Caribou was queen in 1936, and that there was no record of a queen in 1937.
Was Irene Griffeth the 1936 queen?
An August news article in 1937 stated that Irene won a beauty contest at the Limestone Water Carnival that year and was “a former blossom queen.”
But back in the fall of 1936, a different queen was reportedly crowned, according to the Presque Isle Herald, “to replace Valeska Ward, who served as queen last year.” That lady was Elenora Edwards, 18, of Houlton. Also confusing was the article’s headline: “Maine’s Potato Queen for 1937.”
Elenora was the daughter of Charles and Celia Edwards. She was born in Massachusetts but grew up in Island Falls and Houlton. Although Irene, the other contender, was born in Limestone, she spent most of her childhood in Woodland and graduated from Caribou.
When Did “Blossom” Appear?
It may not have been until 1938 that the potato festival included “blossom.”
In Presque Isle, George Charles Stone, executive secretary of the Maine Potato Growers and Shippers Committee, Inc., suggested that Maine should “stage a potato blossom festival and choose a state queen.”
Purplish/pink potato blossoms.
Although Stone was born outside of Maine, his mother was from Unity. In 1923 he married Annie Orcutt, a nurse from Ashland. At the time, he worked in Caribou as a potato broker and resided in Fort Fairfield.
Stone then became a produce buyer for the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, the largest grocery store chain in the United States. He and his family moved to Minneapolis, followed by Dekalb, Georgia, before returning to Presque Isle in the 1930s.
From at least the 1920s, Georgia was famous for its peach blossom festival and queens. It’s not too far-fetched to speculate that Stone may have refined the concept of a potato queen to that of a potato blossom queen and the moving of festivities from the fall to July when Aroostook County potato plants were in full bloom.
Massey Harris tractor at a recent festival antique tractor pull.
Stone and Fort’s Lions Club President Albert Rogers coordinated the 1938 contest and asked area Lions and Rotary clubs to pick the contestants.
The crowning on August 14 was the highlight of Field Day events at Monson Pond, hosted by the Frontier Fish and Game Club and Fort Fairfield Lions Club. Over 2,500 people attended.
The actual queen selection was made prior to the field day, however, and “kept secret” until the event. Judges were Margaret Matson, style columnist of the Bangor Daily News, and Mrs. P. M. Lombard of Washington, D.C.
Pauline Allen of Presque Isle was chosen queen and was presented a “silver loving cup” at Fort’s Paramount Theatre that eventing. A 1937 Presque Isle High School graduate, she was attending the Sargent Business School in Boston.
Rotating Venues
A newer potato festival event—mashed potato wrestling—began in the 1980s. Here, with several area town managers in the ring.
By 1939, the Maine Potato Growers committee was determined to have the festival held annually, with various towns taking turns hosting. That year events took place at Teague Park in Caribou and were deemed a “huge success.”
Rita Daigle of Limestone was crowned by Maine’s Governor Lewis Barrows. She received a $50 merchant certificate and attended the Eastern States Exposition in Springfield, Massachusetts, and the Northern Maine Fair in Presque Isle.
In 1940, during the same week that the Presque Isle Airport was officially chosen for a new army base, the one-day Maine Potato Blossom Festival was held at the Northern Maine Fairgrounds. A parade with floats, marching bands, and tricycles took place, as well as a pie-eating contest, barrel-rolling, boxing contest, banquet, and street dance.
Sixteen town queens competed for the state title, and Audrey Good of Monticello was the winner.
The festival “had a most helpful effect in publicizing Maine potatoes and keeping up the interest in the consumption of Maine potatoes,” the Fort Fairfield Review stated in 1941. The affair held in Fort that year opened with a parade at noon, followed by a potato princess contest for ages 6-12 where Marilyn Hill was chosen from a group of 44 girls. A banquet and public dance were also slated, and judges chose Alyeene Thibodeau of Caribou as the new blossom queen.
Alyeene traveled that fall with the Maine Development Commission, which included Stone and his wife, to Boston, New York City, and other potato markets in eastern and midwestern states. At one wholesale fruit and produce luncheon in Philadelphia, she auctioned off a peck of Maine potatoes for a high bid of $700, with proceeds donated to the Red Cross.
The War Years
During the war years of 1942 and 1943, no festival events were published in the local newspapers, but a potato blossom dance was held in 1944 by the Fort Fairfield Lions Club with Lee Poulin and band from Edmundston, New Brunswick. Dora Thomas of Presque Isle was selected queen and presented with a $50 war bond.
Maine Army National Guard band.
Perhaps due to the war, things seemed bleak in early 1945. The Presque Isle newspaper stated: “One of Aroostook’s greatest publicity stunts, the selection of a potato blossom queen, is fast fading in the background of excusable activity.”
Hollywood…
Glamor, however, was the word for the festival’s return on July 27, 1946, in Houlton. A large stage in Market Square featured a mural background depicting scenes of Aroostook. Newsreel companies filmed festival highlights for theatre audiences, and national and state radio networks also attended. A new event was a potato peeling contest between “housewives and their ex-G.I. sons.”
Governor Horace Hildreth crowned Yvette Gagne of Van Buren as the new queen. In addition to the standard trip to eastern markets, she was promised interviews with “leading New York model agencies” and a “screen test” in Hollywood by 20th Century Studios.
2017 entertainment at the festival with Fort native Ben Kilcollins and the Vargas Twins.
Caribou hosted the 1947 festival at its municipal airport. Events included a large parade, baseball game, and queen pageant. Seventeen ladies competed for the title from the communities of Fort Fairfield, Fort Kent, Presque Isle, Limestone, Mars Hill, Houlton, Van Buren, Mapleton, Eagle Lake, Ashland, Portage Lake, Oakfield, Monticello, Washburn, Easton, Stockholm, and Katahdin Valley.
Katherine Briggs of Caribou was crowned in 1948. (Courtesy of Lisa Rinehart)
Harry Mayer, talent director at Warner Brothers, George Woodruff, a Boston photographer, and Joseph Conway, vice president of Wilson Sporting Goods, were the judges. They picked Betty Green of Presque Isle as the winner.
By now the annual festival was clearly anticipated and organized, and Van Buren hosted the events in 1948. Out of a group of 17 contestants, Katherine Briggs of Caribou received the crown. She later graduated from Simmons College in Boston and married, back in Caribou, Coast Guard Lt. Virgil Rinehart in 1952.
Most queens during their reigns traveled around the state and country representing the Maine potato industry, as did 1948’s queen Katherine Briggs, seen here, second from left, enjoying festivities at an agricultural event. (Courtesy of Lisa Rinehart)
Fort Fairfield again hosted the annual festival in 1949. Twenty-seven parade floats, made by professional designers, cost $250 each. Baseball games, music, fireworks, a festival ball at the high school attended by 600, and the potato council meeting at the Aroostook Valley Country Club were some of the events. The governor from Massachusetts was slated to attend as well as Louisiana’s 1948 Sweet Potato Queen.
Mickey Connett of Caribou and Governor Payne’s wife, Ella.
Eight National Guard jets from Dow Field “put on a show two times” the Fort Fairfield Review stated, “with extremely low altitude buzzing that left the crowd literally breathless.”
Joe Howard of New York City, master of ceremonies at the festival, was a favorite night club and theatre entertainer. One of his greatest hits was “Hello! Ma Baby.”
Mickey Connett of Caribou was crowned the potato blossom queen that year.
In 1950, the one-day affair jumped to four days and was again held in Fort Fairfield with a crowd estimate of 15,000, along with a ball held at Presque Isle’s Air Base. Pageant judges hailed from New York City with two from Woman’s Day magazine. Norma Collins of Caribou—the third Caribou girl in three consecutive years—was named the new queen.
Another War
The Korean War began in 1950 and lasted until 1953. Possibly this had some bearing on the Maine festival. In 1951, the Association of Aroostook Chamber of Commerces voted to form a committee to study a proposal from the Northern Maine Fair and the Aroostook Broadcasting Service “to renew the potato blossom festival as an annual feature of the Northern Maine Fair, beginning in 1952.”
During the Presque Isle fair the year, Jean LeVasseur was crowned potato blossom queen. She later married a Captain Pipes and was living in Italy by 1959.
Maine Governor Ed Muskie.
The Soviets were predicted to attack the United States in 1955, but Fort Fairfield still hosted Town and Country Days on July 16 and 17 with a swim meet, street dance, parade, tractor derby, and horse shoe contest. There was no mention of a queens’ pageant, however.
By 1956, the war had ended and the state festival had again returned to Fort Fairfield with Governor Ed Muskie crowning Fort’s Betty Bubar at the armory. Betty, also a runner up at the Miss Maine contest, later married Peter Johnston, and was a festival/pageant organizer in the 1980s.
In 1957 the festival was held in Caribou, and Charlene Pelletier of Madawaska was crowned queen. Limestone hosted the festival in 1958 with barrel-rolling, tractor driving events, and new queen, and in 1959, at the Aroostook County Extension Field Day in Presque Isle, Patricia Haley of Fort Fairfield was crowned.
1960 festival schedule.
Finally in 1960, the Fort Fairfield Chamber of Commerce received a letter from the Maine Potato Council stating that the town could hold the festival “at least two more years” if desired. The offer was accepted.
The July festival that year included the “biggest parade in Fort ever,” according to the Review, with bands, majorettes, area and state queens, a marching unit from Loring AFB, and farm implements. Monson Pond was again the venue for sporting events. Miss Houlton, Carole Ivey of Linneus, was crowned queen.
2019 Queen Elizabeth Collins of Mapleton, right, held the title for three years due to the Covid pandemic. With her on the 2022 parade float are, center, 2022 Junior Miss Maddilyn Putnam of Presque Isle and 2022 Little Miss Catherine Grace McCrum of Mars Hill.
Since 1960, the festival celebrating Maine’s beautiful potato fields has taken place every year around the third week in July—with the exception of the three-year Covid period—and hosted by Fort Fairfield.
