Regulate festivals lightly

One of the things that makes Carson Valley such a special place is the long list of things people have cooked up to do.

In the days before cable arrived, people had to find their own fun. That meant making up plays, doing big fundraisers or just basically celebrating this place.

Two of the biggest events in the Valley are also the oldest.

Carson Valley Days was cooked up by H.F. Dangberg Jr. in 1910 to get people to ride the train he worked so hard to bring down to Minden and see what the Valley had to offer.

In 1919, after having lost the county seat to Minden, Genoan Lillian Virgin came up with the idea of a Candy Dance to raise money for streetlights.

Over the past century these events have survived and thrived mostly without regulation.

Even when the county felt the need to implement a festival ordinance in the early 1970s, no official would have tried to apply it to the county's treasured events.

Nearly four decades later, organizers of everything from street fairs to our longest standing traditions are looking askance at the new proposal.

We would ask county officials to remember the spirit of Douglas County in rewriting and implementing the ordinance, and keep it to what's necessary.