The 2021 Columbus Spring Pilgrimage has been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Preservation Society of Columbus announced in a press release Monday.
It would have been the 80th year for the annual festival, which celebrates the history and architecture of Columbus and brings thousands of visitors to the city every spring for tours of historic homes and other events. Pilgrimage was originally scheduled for April 5-18.
Last year’s Pilgrimage was also canceled when Mississippi State Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended in March all large gatherings be canceled, causing schools to shut down, restaurants and other businesses to temporarily close and all massive events to be canceled or postponed.
Though vaccines are now available and events are starting to creep back, Preservation Society President Dick Leike said it would have been too difficult for the owners of Columbus’ historic homes to ensure guests maintained social distancing guidelines on the home tours.
“These are, of course, private homes, and we would have to pay attention to what the health department and the CDC and everybody’s saying about meeting, like keeping their distance, social distancing, wearing masks and of course washing your hands and all of that and staying in the small groups,” Leike said. “The social distancing part was one of the toughest parts because they want you to keep a six-foot social distance. We would have maybe, on an afternoon or morning, as many as 90 people in a three-hour window there. … It would have been very difficult to make sure to keep that, because (visitors) don’t all come just evenly spaced.”
He added many of the home owners are older, placing them in the population most vulnerable to COVID-19.
This would have been the first year the Preservation Society, which formed in 2019, ran the home tours independently of the Columbus Convention and Visitors Bureau. The Preservation Society is made up of about 50 members, primarily owners of historic homes, Leike said. The organization formed with plans to help CVB stage Pilgrimage in 2020 and take over altogether this year.
Other spring events scheduled
Leike said members held off on plans for Pilgrimage this year while keeping an eye on the pandemic, but that in a normal year, the festival would include more events than just home tours.
“If we’d gotten to that stage of knowing we were going to put it on, we would probably have had some other events tied into it, of course,” Leike said. “It’s just that we had to put it off, so we haven’t done that.
“The (Preservation) Society would be concerned with everything in preservation,” he added. “It could be different things besides homes. It could be some other properties, something in conjunction with the other historic parts of Columbus.”
Leike said Pilgrimage may be rescheduled for later this year, but those dates are still being determined. The press release says members are looking forward to the 2022 Pilgrimage.
The Preservation Society also asked for funds to help with historic preservation in Columbus, since sales from Pilgrimage tickets would normally go to those efforts. Anyone wishing to support the Preservation Society can make donations at preservecolumbus.com.
Some events that have traditionally been part of or coincided with Pilgrimage are back on for this year. Catfish in the Alley, a downtown festival with live music, food and arts vendors, is still scheduled for April 8-10, said CVB Director Nancy Carpenter.
Tales from the Crypt is being altered this year. The event is traditionally a series of performances by Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science students who research and write their own monologues and skits based on the lives of figures buried at Friendship Cemetery in Columbus, but MSMS teacher Chuck Yarborough said this year the students have different research projects. The plan is for them to write scripts and film them to air online in mid-April, rather than having live performances in the cemetery. However, he said, some of those plans are still being determined.
The Mayor’s Unity Picnic, an annual event organized by the city of Columbus and typically held during Pilgrimage, has not been scheduled yet, said City Public Information Officer Joe Dillon. He said if Gov. Tate Reeves relaxes some of the gathering restrictions throughout the state, the picnic could still be held some time this spring.
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