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LAURIUM -- More than 1,000 people from throughout the region attended the annual Halloween Party, Oct. 31, at the community event at the George Gipp Recreation Area, according to Village Manager Ian Lewis.
The event provided complimentary food, refreshments and candy funded through localized volunteer networks and corporate sponsorships. Lewis reported that 100 pounds of beans were consumed within the first hour of operation, alongside more than 700 hot dogs, 750 bags of chips and 50 pounds of candy distributed throughout the evening.
Laurium Village Office Clerk and Deputy Treasurer Megan Jackman said the municipality enjoyed a successful seasonal turnout.
"This year was the first year that we served a free meal as opposed to just free hot dogs," Jackman said. "This is so important to us because so many families say they don’t get to eat dinner on Halloween night because they’re just out and about."
Jackman said that attendance lines formed immediately when the doors opened at 4 p.m.
"We had a line to the door and people came up," she said. "We were cranking out food pretty much right when four o’clock hit and we ran out of everything."
The distribution required a systematic kitchen rotation inside the recreation grounds to handle the volume of attendees. Food servers included village council members, Jackman, the Gipp rink manager and Village Manager Ian Lewis.
"We had different stations set up," Jackman said. "One person was putting the hot dogs on the plate, the other person was putting the beans on the plate and then one person was swinging out hot chocolate. There is no way we could have done it with just one or two people. I think there was a rotation of like six people in the kitchen."
The Calumet-Laurium-Keweenaw (CLK) Schools formatted and staged a public haunted house inside the recreation grounds, while corporate contributions were provided by local entities including the Peninsula Federal Credit Union, Walmart, H2 Lawn Service, Vollwerth’s, Aspirus and the Keweenaw Health Foundation.