OLEAN, N.Y. — For the first time in a decade, the annual Rock City Park Gem-Mineral-Fossil Show will be scaled back to a two-day event, running Saturday and Sunday at the hilltop property in the town of Olean.
Cindy Smith, who co-owns the historic park at 505 Route 16 South with her husband, Dale, said the 10th-annual event will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days. There is a fee for admission.
Cindy Smith noted the 2017 show, which had been held three days during Columbus Day weekend in past years, is also scheduled a week earlier this year.
“This weekend is going to be a two-day show because Dale and I are getting older by the minute,” Cindy Smith said with a laugh. “So we said, ‘Let’s try two days instead.’”
She said the show was also planned a week earlier so as not to compete with other Columbus Day activities in the region.
“We were sort of butting heads with Letchworth State Park and Ellicottville,” she said of fall festivals at the Wyoming County state park and the nearby village, respectively.
“I think it’s going to be a good move for us,” Cindy Smith added. “I think it will be fine.”
She said while a number of the same vendors will return this year with beautiful displays of rocks, minerals, fossils and geodes, visitors will also see a new artisan who creates beaded trees from gems and minerals.
She said the gems are intricately woven into the wire branches of the trees. Many of the trees displayed and sold will have gems the color of fall leaves.
“They call those trees ‘leaf peepers,’” she said of the bright red and green gemmed trees.
“I also have one gal who is bringing jewelry, but she’s also bringing baked goods,” Cindy Smith said of another new vendor. “The (baked goods) are exquisite and really good — they’ll be an asset to her.”
New displays at the event will include antique, hand-hewn Native American Indian statues that will be set inside the gift shop/visitor museum.
“I got them at an antique store in Cuba and (the proprietor) got them from a professor at St. Bonaventure University,” Cindy Smith remarked. “I think they’re very nice.”
She said an old photo of a teepee will be displayed near the statues.
“We’ll also have a food vendor and of course, Dale will make his (homemade) cider,” Cindy Smith said of her husband’s cider fresh-squeezed from an apple press.
