The Gopher Tortoise Festival is just around the corner, and we’ve got a burrow-load of exciting event details for you! Visit beautiful downtown Douglas on Saturday, October 7and enjoy a full day of live music, arts & crafts, fun activities, delicious food and so much more. The festival is located outdoors, behind the Central Square Gym Complex at 216 S. Madison Ave. in Douglas, Georgia. Admission is free.
The Gopher Tortoise Festival is a handmade, homemade arts and crafts festival featuring 80+ amazing artists selling everything from candles to wooden bowls and boards, bath soaps to custom cups and tumblers, and plenty in between. Every item is handmade, homemade or homegrown by the seller. This is the perfect time to grab gifts for friends, co-workers and family and a few for yourself.
Food trucks of all types will be at this year’s Gopher Tortoise Festival. BBQ, snow-cones, cupcakes, pizza, seafood, burgers, kettle corn and of course funnel cakes. There will be lemonade, sweet treats, pretzels, corn dogs, beef jerky and more. They’ll be lining Bryan Street with anything you could ask for.
Kids will love the face painting, a stilt walker doing tricks plus fun and games at a few of our vendor booths. For kids of all ages, there is axe-throwing, a 360 degree photo booth, live reptiles and gopher tortoises. And, thanks to Smile Doctors Orthodontics, a free zipline ride.
The stage is full all day with music by Will Moseley at 9:30am, Harry King at noon, Lauren Marie at 1:30 and Derrick Flowers at 4pm. The Okefenokee Swamp Park is bringing their reptile show at 11 am and 3 pm. In between all of this will be exhibitions from Georgia Xtreme Allstars, Starlit Twirlers, Force MMA and Cheer Leads Elite. The Douglas Police Department is also showing a ninja turtle movie for Faith & Blue at 1pm in Gym A.
Make a weekend of it and enjoy historic downtown Douglas while you’re here. All of the antique shops, boutiques and restaurants are having a Turtle Hunt, where you can look for little turtles and get discounts and prizes from 10am – 3 pm. And they are only a block away from the festival. Don’t forget to purchase your tickets now for the Mark Chesnutt concert at the Martin Centre Theater Saturday night at 8pm. Tickets are on sale now at themartincentre.org.
Special thanks to all of our sponsors who help make this happen. Smile Doctors Orthodontics, Vyve Broadband, Southwire, Kinetic by Windstream, Douglas National Bank, Pilgrim’s, the City of Douglas, Premium Peanut, Aire Serv, Next Era Energy and Interstate Credit Union, along with RW Griffin, Coca-Cola, McCrary Daniels Insurance, First National Bank of Coffee County, Paulk Vineyards, Wiregrass Trailer Rentals, Fletcher Oil Company, ATC Broadband and Statewide Engineering.
Head over to our Facebook event page at 4th Annual Gopher Tortoise Festival to discover everything we have going on or call the Douglas-Coffee County Chamber of Commerce at 912-384-1873.