Annual Heritage Days on horizon

Clarence Plank

It’s that time again for the 26th annual Heritage Days in Portales this coming weekend. The three-day weekend kicks off Friday with the Christian Country Jamboree at the City Park.

Sharon King, executive director of the Roosevelt County Chamber of Commerce, said this is her favorite event of the year because families can come out and have a good time.

“We’re down on vendors, but we might pick some up by the end of the week because that’s usually what we do,” King said. “Right now we have about 40 vendors so we’re down quite a bit on that hopefully we’ll pick those up over the next few days. A lot of people usually wait until the last minute.”

Saturday’s events include, a classic car show, the 10th annual MainStreet Fun Run, a motorcycle rally and a parade.

New to Heritage Days are a talent show and kickball tournament, sponsored by the Portales Recreation Center.

“The Recreation Center talent show is something new they are doing this year,” King said. “They are just trying to raise money for the recreation center and anybody can enter.”

The Fun Run is a 5K walk/run and a 10K run Portales MainStreet President Danny Woodard described as a social event. Early registration for the run is $15 until Tuesday and $18 after.

“We do have some competitive runners that show up,” Woodard said. “We had a total of 80 runners last year. People can still register all the way up until the day of and we highly recommend they get there early because it starts at 8 a.m. They can start getting registered about 7:15 to 7:30.”

Woodard said the Fun Run is a fundraiser for Portales MainStreet and the money that is raised goes toward different projects. The money from past fundraisers went toward fixing up the old Yam Theater and the Stargazer, which is a block down from the Yam, said Woodard.