Contributing merchants chipped in money to have posters printed, and the Festival Association sponsored it for the first six years. Morton says that a Woolly Worm Festival Association was formed, since there was no chamber of commerce. We also needed an annual event for Banner Elk. “I was immediately struck by the need to have a process for selecting which woolly worm to believe. “I come home from this meeting, and right there on my porch was another woolly worm with a lot of black on it, and only a minimal amount of brown.” Morton then realized that when you forecast with woolly worms, you don’t know which worm to trust. When I finally found a woolly worm, it was completely brown from end to end.įate then took a role as Morton was reminded of the worm. I’d done the forecast using the very first worm that I found that year because we were getting close to deadline. “The day before the meeting, I had done a woolly worm publication that I worked for. I know, at Grandfather Mountain, the Highland Games and Singing on the Mountain were very important to our publicity efforts. I told the people who were there that I thought Banner Elk would benefit by having an annual event of some type. I was not a merchant, but I accepted the invitation to go to the meeting. “Some years later, I was invited to a meeting where they were trying to get some ideas together to possibly form a merchant’s association in Banner Elk. Morton, always interested in area lore, tucked the knowledge into the back of his mind. A gentleman who worked at Grandfather Mountain told me about woolly worms being used to forecast winter'. 'That was when I first learned about the woolly worm’s role in local folklore. 'October of 1973 was my first autumn in this area,' says Morton. Morton was one of the founders of the Woolly Worm Festival. When Jim Morton first put a blade of grass in front of a woolly worm, he had no idea that the fuzzy critter at his feet would lead to a festival that draws nearly 20,000 people, 160 vendors, 1,000 worm trainers, and national media crews to the town of Banner Elk. An Interview With The Founder of Woolly Worm Racing

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