The 2023 Pioneer Days Festival will be held this weekend in Berryville’s Pioneer Park.

The event, presented by the Carroll County Historical and Genealogical Society, returned in 2021 after a two-decade hiatus.

It offers visitors a chance to step back in time experience daily life as it existed for the first pioneers in the county.

This year’s event will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, Sept. 22, and Saturday. Sept. 23. Among the activities on the schedule are live music, vendors and crafts, history demonstrations, pony rides, a petting zoo and food and games.

There also will be a pie-baking contest.

“We are so excited,” said Star Lee, president of the historical society. “We’ll have singing. We’ll have all kinds of different vendors here. The Extension ladies are coming to talk about canning. We’re going to have some people coming in from Newton County. They’re going to teach us about making homemade cheese and fermenting and how to distill our different herbs and stuff to make oils. We’ve just got a lot of stuff from going on.”

There will be plenty of activities for kids, Lee said.

“The community center is coming and they’ve got some stuff planned for kids,” she said. “We have a couple of churches that are doing things for kids. We’re having pony rides coming in from Springdale. And these are free events. Mr. Shrock from over at Green Forest, he’s loaning us his little barrel train to ride. So, we’ve got all kinds of events for just about everyone.”

From 9 a.m. to noon Friday morning, third-grade students from Berryville and Eureka Springs will be on hand to tour the historical museum, the Berryville library and Pioneer Park.

“So we’re going to have almost 200 little kids coming through on Friday,” Lee said.