New parade route sees large turnout

HOULTON – After revamping the parade route and launching a public relations campaign to draw more attention to the annual holiday light parade, Lori Weston, the executive director of the Greater Houlton Chamber of Commerce, sat back and watched.

And, she admitted Tuesday, she was a bit apprehensive as the date for the event drew near.

“Not a lot of people had signed up by the Monday before the parade,” she recalled during a telephone conversation. “And we were sitting in the office fretting about it.”

But adjustments to the parade route, some lighting changes and the opportunity for parade goers to give back seemed to be all that was needed to put some zing back into the holiday fling, which drew a huge crowd when it snaked through the streets Saturday evening.

“The parade and the tree lighting really went off without a hitch, it was just wonderful,” Weston said Tuesday. “We had 27 entries [in the parade], and we were thrilled with how everything went.”

This year’s parade was quite different from those held in years past.

Weston, who took over the reins of the Chamber in October, decided to breathe new life into the event and made several changes. While she held onto the practice of attaching a theme to the parade, the route was expanded.

In the past, the procession began at the Houlton Higher Education Center on Military Street, continued up that street to Broadway and snaked through Market Square before returning to the starting point.

But when Weston started to organize this year’s parade, she heard from several people that the old route was so short that it “almost wasn’t worth putting together an entry and participating.”

With that in mind, the Chamber started this year’s parade at Andy’s IGA on North Street and wrapped it up at the Houlton Recreation Center on Main Street.

On Saturday evening, hundreds of pedestrians shivered in hefty jackets and puffy mittens as they watched the entries coast down North Street. Other motorists waited in cars as the floats, marching units and firetrucks rolled past.

This year’s theme was “Christmas Carols,” and many businesses and civic organizations took part in the event, as did local clubs and fire departments.

As they made their way through the parade, members of North Country Cruisers, an auto enthusiasts club, collected new toys from the crowd that will be distributed to local children.

Galen Wilde, proprietor of Shiretown Coins in Market Square, made room in his shop for Santa Claus that evening, and the community was invited to stop in.

Before the parade ended, Santa flipped the switch to turn on the new lights on the town Christmas tree. The tree, which will sit in the center of Market Square throughout the holiday season, is festooned with multicolored lights that were donated by Efficiency Maine at no cost to the town.

With the success of this year’s event, Weston said Tuesday that she plans to do much the same next year.

“We’ll have a different theme, but people absolutely loved the new parade route,” she said. “We’ve heard some really great reviews about both the route and the parade itself, so I think we’ll keep it like this for a while.”