Thousands turned out for the three-day Pevely Days festival Aug. 14-16 at Pevely City Park, said Linda Miles, an organizer and Pevely’s deputy city clerk.
Overall, the city-sponsored event was great and everything went as planned, she said.
“I would say Thursday was more crowded than last year,” she said. “Friday was about the same. Saturday afternoon was slow, probably due to the heat, but Saturday evening was very busy.
“There was some thunder and lightning, a little bit of a sprinkle and the temperature dropped a little bit. We had a real good turnout for (the evening performance of) the Crossroads band and then the fireworks (at 9 p.m.).”
Miles said this was the first year the festival included live music every day, and people seemed to enjoy it. All the performers were new to Pevely Days and came highly recommended.
Earcandy performed on Aug. 14, and All4nothin performed Aug. 15. Steve Kirn performed on the afternoon of Aug. 16 before Crossroads took the stage at 6 p.m.
Miles said the mechanical bull ride, caricatures, petting zoo and pony rides were popular again this year. The event also included carnival rides and food and craft vendors.
Mayor Steve Markus said on Monday that he hadn’t heard any complaints about the festival, adding that the food vendors were kept busy.
“I heard the food trucks were running out of food,” he said.
Miles said a lot of the vendors had been at previous Pevely Days festivals.
“This is the first year that we’ve sold all our vendor spaces and all our food truck and trailer spaces probably two weeks before the deadline,” she said. “We’re getting a lot of repeat vendors and repeat food vendors. We had a lot of people on the wait list that were not able to get in this year.”
As part of the festival, the STL Stangs Mustang club held a car show on Main Street.
“That’s the first time they’ve hosted a car show for us, and that went really well,” she said.