The 64th annual Bohemia Mining Days starts this Thursday in Cottage Grove. It’s a celebration of the community’s early days of mining and logging. KLCC’s Rachael McDonald spoke with Bohemia Mining Days Executive Director Scott Borgioli:
Borgioli: This year's theme is celebrating Bohemia's golden years through mining murals and movies.
McDonald: Cool. Yeah, I mean, Cottage Grove has this history with a lot of different aspects of the mining, the logging, and then of course, famous movies have been filmed there, right?
Yes,yes. Yes. Animal House. The General was filmed there.
Buster Keaton.
Back in the day, Buster Keaton, back in the day.
And so what are some things that you're excited about with the festival this year?
Well, this is going to sound a little strange, but the carnival cannot make it this year, the carnival industry has been decimated because of COVID. So they are unable to come this year.
So what we did this year is we massively expanded the kid’s zone. It's going to be the largest in history. The Girl Scouts have stepped up and volunteered to operate the kid’s zone. There's a lot of parent volunteers as well. So there is a huge and vast amount of activities for the kids. I would be surprised if anybody who brought children to the festival, walk away disappointed. I think we're gonna see, just as we did last year, smiling faces.
We have, for example, a member of the community stepped forward, they're going to do planting projects with the kids. So the kids are going to be able to, you know, put seeds in a pot and learn how to grow things and, and walk out with, you know, their plant and so forth. And we got a lot of the carnival games, like cornhole toss, horseshoe toss, some ring toss, we got a duck pond, you know, the fake ducks that just float around, and you try to pop a ball on it and win a prize.
And I'm really actually excited. And to be honest with you, I'm kind of glad that the carnival isn't coming because it presented a new opportunity for us to implement other items that we can do to offset the carnival. And we nailed it out of the ballpark this year. I'm so proud of my leadership team for stepping forward and all the ideas and hard work that they're doing to make this a success. We also have the ore kart races this year, this will be our third annual ore cart races. And that was a major hit in 2021, so we brought it back again last year.
And it sounds like there's some concern about the future of the festival in terms of being able to afford to continue on?
Yes, well, I was hired last year as the executive director. And when I was brought on, I immediately started looking through finances and history of our budget, I immediately recognized that, in its current format, Bohemia Mining Days is unsustainable. I'm actually shocked how it has survived over the past, I would say, eight, nine years or so, through no fault of any of the leadership or directors but by the mere fact that the city doesn't provide funding.
In terms of city support, yeah, they do provide generators to provide the extra power needed for the vendors. But those generators were given free of charge to the city as National Guard surplus. And the public works director and his team, who are wonderful, fabulous people, I thank them immensely for all of their hard work, they come out and they prep the park and drop off some barricades and, and help with little things here and there. So in that regard, I do appreciate that. However, when I'm talking about with city support is not the, in kind, minimal amount that they give us.
But we need funding support from the city.
KLCC reached out to Cottage Grove city government for a comment on Borgioli’s suggestion that the 3-day festival could fold without additional financial support from the city. City Manager Richard Myers said the city council is considering funding options for next year’s festival. Myers also said the park is provided for the festival free of charge, including cleanup.
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