21-06-2025
Lilac Festival to give downtown Claremore flowery new look
The downtown Claremore Lilac District will soon get a makeover to match its name, said the director of the upcoming Lilac Festival.
Claremore's inaugural Lilac Festival will bring live music, dancing, shopping deals, vendor booths and more to the downtown streets from Thursday to Saturday. The festival is free and runs from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday and Friday and 9 a.m. to noon Saturday.
Steve Robinson, executive director of organizer Claremore Main Street, said the festival will usher in permanent cosmetic changes to the Lilac District.
"We're gonna have flower baskets, planters, street poles all painted black," Robinson said. "It's going to transform the look downtown."
Robinson said Claremore Main Street will paint a purple Lilac District logo on the street at the intersection of Will Rogers Boulevard and Cherokee Street. The organization will also hang lilac baskets from the light poles and place lilac-filled concrete planters beside downtown benches.
Claremore's downtown has carried the Lilac District name since 2021, when Claremore City Council passed a resolution to make it so. The name pays tribute to Lynn Riggs, author of "Green Grow the Lilacs," the play that inspired the musical "Oklahoma!"
"The Lilac Festival will really focus on the connection between the Lilac District, 'Green Grow the Lilacs' and Native Americans at the beginning of our state," Robinson said. "'Green Grow the Lilacs' was all about Claremore becoming a state. ... What we are celebrating is that era of statehood where you brought together Native Americans with farmers, with ranchers, and you mixed all those cultures together, and that became Claremore."
Riggs embodied this mixture: His mother was one-eighth Cherokee, while his father had English heritage.
On Friday, festival attendees can take part in square dancing and a pie auction, both elements of Riggs' "Green Grow the Lilacs." At 9:30 p.m. that night, the Claremore Museum of History will screen "Oklahoma!" at Gazebo Park.
The festival will also spotlight Claremore's Cherokee heritage.
Monica Champ, a Cherokee jeweler and beadwork artist helping to organize the festival, said the organizers are inviting women to wear their ribbon skirts Thursday for a style show.
"The reason we wear them is to show our pride, our solidarity, our sovereignty, that we're still here," Champ said.
She said Choogie Kingfisher, a storyteller and Cherokee National Treasure, will perform at Gazebo Park from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday.
Cherokee artists will also sell their wares at vendor booths throughout the festival, and kids can make their own Cherokee-inspired art by painting rocks to form a snake, which Robinson said will stay on display downtown after the festival.
Champ said she is very excited for the festival and hopes it will promote "gadugi," the Cherokee concept of building and strengthening community.
Robinson said the goal of the festival and accompanying cosmetic changes is to make downtown Claremore a destination spot.
"We really want the Lilac Festival to become an event like Dickens [on the Boulevard] ... where we draw 10,000 people to downtown Claremore and get a feel for it so they want to come back," Robinson said.
