The Woollybear Festival is held every Fall in downtown

Vermilion, Ohio Vermilion is a city in Erie and Lorain counties in the U.S. state of Ohio, on Lake Erie. The population was 10,659 at the 2020 census. Located about 35 miles west of Cleveland and 17 miles east of Sandusky, it is part of the Cleveland metr ...

, on

Lake Erie Lake Erie ( "eerie") is the fourth largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also h ...

. The one-day, family event, which began in 1973, features a woolly bear costume contest in which children, even pets, are dressed up as various renditions of the woolly bear caterpillar. The festival is held every year around October 1 on a Sunday on which the

Cleveland Browns The Cleveland Browns are a professional American football team based in Cleveland. Named after original coach and co-founder Paul Brown, they compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (A ...

either have an away game or are not playing. It is touted as the largest one-day festival in Ohio, with attendance over 100,000.

History

The festival is the brainchild of

Dick Goddard Richard Duane Goddard (February 24, 1931 – August 4, 2020) was an American television meteorologist, author, cartoonist, and animal activist. From 1966 until his retirement in 2016, he was the evening meteorologist at WJW-TV in Cleveland, O ...

, long-time weatherman at Cleveland's

WJW-TV WJW (channel 8) is a television station in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, affiliated with the Fox network. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, WJW maintains studios on Dick Goddard Way (named for the station's late longtime weatherman—previousl ...

. The Woolly Bear Caterpillar is similarly celebrated for its mythical association to winter forecasting. After the caterpillars' eggs hatch in fall, folklore suggests the severity of an upcoming winter can be gauged by observing the amount of black versus orange in the caterpillars' bands. Attracting 2,000 spectators in the first year, the number grew to an estimated 15,000 by the eighth festival and quickly overwhelmed the town of

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...

. Of the 13 cities that expressed interest, organizers selected Vermilion as the new home. The "Woollybear 500" is a comedic race The 2020 Woollybear Festival was the first since the event's inception not to be held because of the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

References

{{reflist Animal festival or ritual Festivals in Ohio Tourist attractions in Lorain County, Ohio 1973 establishments in Ohio Festivals established in 1973

History

See also

References