Wurst Festival again draws big crowd

There’s a good chance Mother Nature is a Rotarian.

With cloudy skies and cool-than-normal temperatures, she held off on any rain until the end of the annual Wurst Festival Saturday, sponsored by the Boulder City Sunrise Rotary.

“I thought the crowd was fantastic and one of the largest ones we’ve ever had,” said Doug Scheppmann, a longtime Rotarian and the event’s coordinator. “The line for the bratwurst was never-ending. We ended up selling out of bratwurst and hotdogs, which was great.”

The temperatures were in the 70s most of the day and even cooler as the sun began to set. In contrast, the highs this coming weekend are supposed to be near 90 degrees.

“The only issue we had was later in the day when the weather turned on us a bit, which caused us to shut things down about an hour earlier than normal,” Scheppmann said. “It started sprinkling at 6:30 p.m. and a little harder at 7 p.m., which is when we pulled the plug.”

The day also featured a car show by the Boulder City Cruisin’ Association with nearly 300 entries of all makes and models. There were also several food vendors, a live auction, music, crafters and for the first time this year, those selling antiques.

“They had a very good turnout for the car show and everything was very well organized.,” he said. “The crowds were fantastic over there as well. They anticipated about 350 cars and last I heard there were about 40 cars that didn’t show because of the cloudiness and some were concerned it was going to rain.”

In terms of feedback from the public, Scheppmann said, “Many said it was the best Wurst Festival we’ve ever had. Part of that was the weather. There was cloud coverage but it wasn’t extremely hot out there.”

While as of Monday he did not have dollar figure from the food sales, he did say they sold 3,000 bratwursts and 1,000 hotdogs. As for the live auction, they brought in around $55,000, which is about the norm, he said. The bulk of the funds raised at the event go to cover costs associated with Senior Grad Night each May.

“We had plenty of help Saturday between the Rotarians as well as all the high school students, who were great,” he said. “The success of our program is two-fold. One of the things that drives our success are the people who are generous enough to donate items for the live auction as well as those who come out and find a way to give back. It can simply be having a bratwurst and enjoying the day by listening to music or participating in the auction. We really appreciate the turnout we get year in and year out for our event. The community again came together. It was a great day.”

Karen Jensen, who moved to Boulder City with her family two years ago, said events like Wurst Festival were one of the many reasons why they chose to now call Boulder City home.

“We moved here from Houston and while there are great community events there, there is something special about events like this in a small town,” she said. “We loved the cars, music and bratwurst. It really is a slice of Americana.”