A local festival, dubbed ‘The Neatest Little Fair,’ will host its 70th annual event in Crane the last week of August. 

The Crane Broiler Festival, a tradition since 1952, will take place Wednesday, Aug. 25 through Saturday, Aug. 28, at the Crane City Park, located at 107 Myrna Lewers Parkway. The event is free to attend.

“The festival is celebrating its 70th year,” Nathan Quick, president of the Crane Broiler Festival Association said. “The event started as the ‘Crane Picnic’ in 1952. I think what makes the Broiler Festival special is the wide variety of things to see, do, hear and taste.”

According to the Crane Broiler Festival website, the first annual festival was held on Oct. 9, 1952, and was sponsored by the Southwest Missouri Broilers Association that first year. It was composed of 60 broiler producers. A broiler is a young chicken generally weighing between 2 ½ to 3 ½ pounds and produced commercially for meat.

According to the website, the chicken dinner at the Crane Broiler Festival has always been the premier item that brings people back year after year to visit Crane during this weekend event. During this first festival, the locally raised chickens were cooked over an open air pit made of concrete blocks and metal racks, the same technique is still used today; just on a larger scale. 

“No visit to the Broiler Festival would be complete without one of our famous chicken dinners. Come see how we cook on a 50 foot pit,” Quick said.

The process to cook enough chickens for the two-day festival is quite an undertaking.

According to the website, volunteers load 50 frozen chicken halves onto metal cooking racks. Once the chickens are loaded they are seasoned and are ready to be placed in the 50 by 6 foot wide concrete block pit cooking area. The pit holds 25 metal racks, which means 1,150 chicken halves can cook at one time. The pit will be fired up from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., on both Friday and Saturday. Over the two-day cooking period, volunteers will go through 3 to 3 ½ tons of charcoal and over 50 gallons of various sauce mixes. 

It takes more than 50 people during these two days to man just the chicken cooking area. Many of these people have worked here in the pit area over 10 years each and take great pride in the quality of the chicken produced during the Crane Broiler Festival, according to the website.

According to Quick, there will also be non-chicken dinner options for attendees to enjoy as well. 

“If you are looking for something else, there are all sorts of traditional fair food,” Quick said. 

The event includes not only food but a slew of other fun activities. 

“We have carnival rides for the kids and arts and crafts for anyone. We’ve got a parade, a car show and a beauty pageant,” Quick said. “We also have music, Friday night it’s country and all day Saturday it’s bluegrass both on the back stage. The front stage will feature some of the area’s best gospel talent.”

According to the website, the carnival rides will kick off this year’s event on Wednesday, August 25. The carnival rides will take two to three tickets each or an armband can be purchased to ride unlimited rides. The cost of tickets are $1 each, or $20 for 22.

Pre-carnival armbands can be purchased up to the date of the carnival (Aug. 25, 2021) at Porter’s Grocery, First Home Bank, & Simmons Bank in Crane. You will receive a voucher (business card size) for each armband. The cost of the armbands are $20 for pre-purchased or $25 at the carnival, according to the website. 

Since the first boiler festival, a local beauty pageant was held during the event, according to the website. 

The current beauty pageant, “Miss Slick Chick”, will take place on Friday, Aug. 27, according to a post on the Crane Broiler Festival Facebook page. Contestants must be from Stone, Barry, Lawrence, Christian, or Taney counties. There are eight age groups for contestants and no more than eight contestants per each group: 

Entry deadline for the pageant is Sunday, Aug. 15. An entry form can be found on the Crane Broiler Festival website. 

The festival will feature crafting and commercial booths for attendees to enjoy and shop. 

According to the website, the booth exhibits will be located on the west end of Crane City Park and will be open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., on Friday, Aug. 27, and 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., on Saturday, Aug. 28. 

The Crane Broiler Festival Car Show will take place on Saturday, Aug. 28, from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., at the park. Cars in the car show are also invited to be a part of the annual Broiler Festival parade, which will take place that Saturday morning, according to the Facebook page. 

Quick said there are no specific COVID restrictions for the event, but they do have recommendations. 

“Masks are not mandatory, but if you want to wear one it’s fine. Keep a safe distance, use the hand sanitizer stations often,” Quick said.” Have fun (and) be smart.”

According to the website, everyone who works the festival are volunteers, who live in the Crane area. In total it takes over 250 Crane locals to work in all parts of the Crane Broiler Festival each year.

Quick said the festival is about the community coming together.

“I think what I like most about the festival is seeing all the volunteers working together and getting the opportunity to catch up with old friends,” Quick said.

For more information visit cranebroilerfestival.org or visit ‘Crane Broiler Festival’ on Facebook. 

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