Welcome to the 24th annual Oregon Jamboree – whether you’ve traveled to join us, or whether you live locally.
If you’re a visitor, your presence is appreciated. You are likely here to enjoy some great country music performances in a nice, clean atmosphere.
Maybe you already know that Sweet Home has a lot of great possibilities for you to enjoy in addition to some great music – lakes and rivers, little shops tucked away on our streets that offer all sorts of interesting wares, plenty of hiking, swimming, river floating, etc. If you’ve arrived early, we hope you’ve already found some great fun.
Our visitors to the Jamboree are especially appreciated, though, because this festival is not only one of the oldest in the Northwest, but its primary purpose for existence stems from an effort to recover from the impact of the spotted owl-based shutdown of many of our local forests.
Since the early 1990s, Sweet Home has, as have many other logging towns, struggled to redefine itself. The Jamboree was founded specifically to raise funds to clean things up and to develop new economic avenues.
It hasn’t been easy and we’ve had our share of down years, but the show has gone on, with only one exception, annually since 1992. And if you truly love country music, what could be better than relaxing on that grass (instead of in a cloud of dust in some canyon or some hayfield somewhere) and listening to artists ranging from newbies, on their way up the ladder to stardom, to those who’ve already made it there – in spades.
We want you to have a great time and leave with wonderful memories of Sweet Home.
And to those of us who live here, yeah, the traffic flow’s going to suddenly quadruple on our streets, we’re going to be standing in long lines at the grocery store if we’ve forgetten to buy the necessities before the crowds really get here. Those who aren’t particularly fond of country music will get to listen to it anyway.
But these visitors are here to enjoy themselves and that means they have to shop and eat and maybe bed down here. That’s money going into the pockets of people you know, people who need it. It’s money flowing directly into schools to help with our students’ educations and activities. It’s money for clubs, churches and others who need to raise funds.
Appreciate it and extend a warm welcome to the folks who bring it here for a few days in the middle of summer.
Make them feel welcome.