Frank Speziale photo

NORWICH – It all started with an issue of Country Woman Magazine.

After Shirley Proskine read about a Pumpkin Festival in Keene, NH where thousands of people flock and thousands more jack-o-lanterns are suspended from scaffoldings, her daughter Michelle Lorimer and a small group of Norwich residents decided to travel to the festival to see what all the fuss was about.

"We thought it would be a cool thing to go check out," said Lorimer. "So there was Gary and Holly Brightman, Joe [Lorimer] and I, George and Debby Flanagan, and Bill and Karen Lyons."

What they saw was shoulder to shoulder people, scaffoldings fifty feet in the air, and upwards of 17,000 carved pumpkins––a whole lot of orange. They decided to try to bring a similar event to Norwich in the year 1999.

"We decided to try one in '99 so we'd have it set in the year 2000," said Marilyn Oliver, Lorimer's sister and one of the founding members of the Norwich Pumpkin Festival. "That's why we started in '99."

At first, the goal was to contest the Guinness World Record for most lit jack-o-lanterns set by Keene, N.H. In 1999, the Guinness World Record was 17,693 pumpkins. The first Norwich Pumpkin Festival tallied 3,136 pumpkins. Its highest year was in 2004, when Norwich Pumpkin Festival had 7,122 pumpkins.