How small hamlet handles 70k at world-famous garage sale
Our neighbors in Warrensburg see massive influx of people at 'holiday' event, but say one group of regulars stayed home.
Just north of Lake George, the hamlet of Warrensburg — with a population of under 4,000 — hosted more than 70,000 visitors last weekend for its annual, trademark event of the year. The four-day-long (Oct. 2-5) “World’s Largest Garage Sale” brought bumper-to-bumper traffic on Main Street, sidewalks packed for miles by bargain hunters, and vendors and shoppers who enjoyed perfect weather for over ten hours a day.
Everything from antiques and books to perfume, clothes and furniture were for up grabs on a three-mile stretch of at least a thousand residential garage sales, according to The Sun Community News, alongside food and drink trunks. Vendors were a combo of regulars and first-timers.
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Not only did shoppers flood through the town over the weekend from Friday through Sunday, but thousands also arrived several days early in order to take advantage of “early pickings.” Bargain-hunters began arriving to town one or even two days before the sale officially started, with many surveying items for sale before dawn on Friday. Some vendors told The Sun that Canadian shoppers stayed home this year, causing Saturday’s numbers to decline a bit.
Julie Garcia, founder of Hudson & Main Cannabis on Main Street, was in the center of the action all weekend. She has been in the space for nine years and calls the sale “a great boost for our local economy” (the sale has generated roughly $10 million since it began in the late ‘70s, according to The Sun). Hudson & Main invited cannabis vendors to set up and market outside of its store, something Garcia hopes to expand upon next year. “We saw thousands of people,” she says. “We want to take advantage of that.”
In many ways, the garage sale felt like a national holiday in the hamlet, with public facilities all affected by the traffic and tourism surge. Even the Warrensburg Town Hall was closed the Friday of the event. At least six buses shuttled packs of people back and forth from their parking spots at the Warren County Fairgrounds on Schroon River Road into downtown Warrensburg.
“You can feel the energy building up over the week prior,” says Garcia. “There’s a lot of planning. And then a big sigh when it’s over.”
Warrensburg earned the “World’s Largest Garage Sale” title in the ‘80s from the Guinness Book of World Records.
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