The Barnwell Community Organization held its free Butts, Spuds and Brews Festival on Saturday.

The festival, which has been going on for five years now, celebrates a local tradition that dates back to the 1800s, when Barnwell residents first began gathering for food and fellowship. This year, the festival expanded with around 50 vendors, live music and the Spud Run, a 5k and one-mile fun run.

Butts and brews is, of course, a reference to the food and drinks at the festival, but "spuds" is specifically a reference to Barnwell having at one point been one of the largest potato producing areas in the county. Alabama was also one of the largest producers of potatoes in the United States.

The festival serves as Community Day for the Barnwell Community Organization, which is meant to bring people in the community together. The group also has a fundraising event in April, the Barnwell Shrimp Derby, a shrimp boil with proceeds donated to the restoration of the Historic Barnwell Community Center, which was originally built in 1918 as a schoolhouse.

The Barnwell area near Fairhope was at one point a vibrant farming community, with the first historical recordings of people living there dating back to as early as 1850. In 1903, Postmaster Charles "Dewey" Slocum named the area's post office "Barnwell" in honor of Rev. Robert Barnwell, an Episcopal Bishop from Alabama who died the previous year, and the name would stick.

The area's first schoolhouse was built in Meadow Springs in 1903, but was destroyed in a hurricane in 1916. The new schoolhouse, built in 1918, would later become a community hall for local groups such as the Barnwell Farmers Club and the Women's Auxiliary, and later the Community Association and the local fire department. However, the building was severely damaged during Hurricane Sally in 2020.

The Barnwell Community Organization was formed to save the structure and help turn it into a community hub. Melissa Nolte, who serves as acting president of the Barnwell Community Organization, said the idea to restore the property came after an Easter egg hunt in 2021.

“We were talking about how sad it was that it was just falling apart and it had all this history and we’d all grown up going to events there, and we were like, ‘Boy, somebody should really do something about this,' And then somewhere during the course of that, we kind of realized that we were it if somebody was going to do something about it,” Nolte said.

The group, made up of 10 board members along with several volunteers, currently owns six acres of property, including the community center, which they have been restoring since 2021. After years of work by the Historic Development Commission, led by Harriet Outlaw and later Fairhope Museum Director Donnie Barrett, a historical marker commemorating the site was dedicated in 2022 during one of the group’s very first Community Days.

Nolte said they hope to restore the building back to its former self, adding that they also want to build a playground for the community on the property.

To donate and to learn more about their efforts, visit www.barnwellcommunity.org for more information. They also accept checks mailed to 8177 County Road 11, Fairhope, AL, 36532.