RAPID CITY, S.D. — The 48th annual West Boulevard Summer Festival has been a summer staple for decades and this year is no different.On Saturday and Sunday, Wilson Park will be lined with more than 80 vendors offering arts and crafts, woodworking, ceramics, and a little bit of everything else.

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“Yeah, come out and shop. Enjoy it. Bring bring the family. We’re here for Father’s Day. Bring your dad, whoever you want. Like I said, there’s something for everybody, something for all ages. You can get your face painted. You can go buy a chainsaw wood carving. We’ve got plenty of popcorn and lemonade and all kinds of stuff that you can eat,” said Sharissa Stevens, Director, West Boulevard Summer Festival.The first Summer Festival was held to raise money to plant trees, replacing many along West Boulevard that were removed after being stricken with Dutch Elm Disease.”The association was established and worked with the city to pick out those trees, plant those trees, and help pay for those trees. So this is our only fundraiser of the year for the West Boulevard Neighborhood Association. This helps fund all of the rest of our events that we do, any of our community kind of gathering things in the neighborhood. So that’s kind of how it got started, just to plant some trees, and almost 50 years later, we’re still here,” Stevens said.The Summer Festival runs from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday.

By
Jerry Steinley

Jerry Steinley has lived in the Black Hills most of his life and calls Rapid City home. He received a degree in Journalism with a minor in Political Science from Metropolitan State University in Denver in 1994.