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ELIZABETH - Hundreds gathered in downtown Elizabeth on Saturday to celebrate the area's long history during the seventh annual Wirt County Pioneer Day.

Sponsored by the Elizabeth Beauchamp Chapter Daughters of American Pioneers, the event is a remembrance of Wirt County's heritage and is designed around the rural life traditions of the area's ancestors to keep their memories alive, said Carole Menefee, DAP Regent and Wirt County Pioneer Day treasurer.

Saturday's program featured demonstrations of pioneer skills, bluegrass music, booths of homemade crafts, food and activities throughout the day. The two oldest historical buildings in Elizabeth, the Beauchamp-Newman Museum and the Little Kanawha Hotel, were open for tours and the courthouse square in downtown Elizabeth featured a mixture of antique engines, classic cars, old tractors and oil field equipment.

Some of the pioneer skills demonstrations included knitting, apple butter making, basket weaving, goat milking and cornmeal grinding. There will also be demonstrations by local Civil War re-enactors, including members of the 19th Virginia and 17th Virginia Cavalry units encamped beside Wirt High School.

"It looks like a really good day, we're very pleased with the weather," Menefee said Saturday afternoon, as Friday's rains gave way to blustery but very sunny weather on Saturday.

Menefee said the event had a lot of new people come in Saturday to participate in the festival, including crafters, vendors and other types of exhibitors, including antique engines and automobiles.

Now in its seventh year, the Wirt County Pioneer Day program has continued to grow each year in interest and participation, Menefee said.

"We want to capture the youth," she said, "and let them know how their ancestors lived and try to get them interested in the past and interested in being part of the community."

Looking ahead at next year, one thing the event's organizers want to do is to get some of the other longtime communities in Wirt County involved in the historical aspects of Pioneer Day. Menefee said there are already interested people from Creston and Burning Springs who are planning to create historical exhibits for next year's event to highlight the history of their individual communities.

Parkersburg resident Jessie Whited was at Saturday's event with her husband, Bill, where he was displaying his antique engines. She said her husband is a Wirt County native and they have attended the Pioneer Day program in previous years.

"I think it's great," she said. "It brings people together."

J.P. Martin, of Camp Barbe Road, between Elizabeth and Mineral Wells, said he liked everything about the Pioneer Day program, especially the cars and antique tractors and engines on display, along with food and crafts.

He was in his second year attending the event, having moved back to Wirt County a few years ago. He was born and raised there and later moved to Jackson County.

"You see some of the people you haven't seen for a while and there's a little bit of everything for everybody," he said of Saturday's event.

"I think it's important to get people together and for some of the younger kids to see some of the old stuff and how things were done," Martin said.