The Sublette County Chamber of Commerce and Main Street Pinedale are excited to announce that Main Street Pinedale, after hiring Samantha Harnack as their part-time Program Manager, will be coordinating efforts for a fun-filled, action-packed Rendezvous 2020. Main Street Pinedale will be planning and organizing the vendor fair, street dance, and parade. Samantha will continue her role as the Pinedale Travel & Tourism Ambassador with the Town of Pinedale in addition to now assisting the Main Street Pinedale program.
For years the Chamber has been organizing the Rendezvous vendor fair, parade, and street dance. Rendezvous is an important annual event for Pinedale and the Chamber had taken on the responsibilities to ensure Rendezvous continued. However, each year organizing the event became increasingly challenging and time consuming for a Chamber organization dedicated to a county-wide sustainable business climate. The Chamber Board approached the Town of Pinedale and Main Street Pinedale about taking over its Rendezvous responsibilities in hopes to invest time and resources on activities more closely aligned with the Chamber’s mission. After months of discussions and planning Main Street Pinedale is ready to take the reins.
The Main Street Pinedale Board feels that helping to organize a portion of the Rendezvous events fits well with their mission and vision – Mission: “Main Street Pinedale cultivates civic pride by collaborating with businesses, organizations and community members to foster a vibrant downtown.”
Vision: “An attractive and vibrant downtown that sustains Pinedale as a welcoming place to live, work and play!”
Mayor Matt Murdoch helped to facilitate the transition, recognizing that while the Chamber has been doing a fantastic job of organizing aspects of Rendezvous in the past, that it didn’t align with their priorities as well as it does with Main Street Pinedale’s. The Town of Pinedale will continue to support Main Street Pinedale with a variety of resources, including office space and personnel to help with some of their events.
Samantha is in the process of contacting all of the organizations and volunteers involved in helping with Rendezvous, including the Green River Rendezvous Pageant Association, PFAC, Traders Row, and the Rodeo Association among others, to offer her services. She hopes to help organize all of the information from each group to offer festival goers an easy to use website, map, schedule, and program. The Executive Director of the Museum of the Mountain Man, Clint Gilchrist, said that he is happy to have help with the organization of the Rendezvous events during an already busy time of year.
Main Street Pinedale will continue to organize and host the Winter Carnival each President’s Day weekend (this year February 15th and 16th, 2020), as a fundraiser for their business Facade Grant Program. The Green River Rendezvous Festival will be an additional fundraiser that they hope will continue to grow, while maintaining the amazing traditions from the last 85 years.
More information about the Rendezvous and Winter Carnival events can be found at: www.mainstreetpinedale.com