East Tennessee's favorite Labor Day tradition went out the same way it came in − with a boom.
Boomsday, the showstopping annual fireworks celebration, sent extravagant displays up over Fort Loudon Lake before a riveted audience of hundreds of thousands. The event became a cornerstone of the local calendar. On that magical long weekend, Knoxville enjoyed the start of football season, plenty of explosive festivities and, somewhere on the horizon, the start of fall.
In 1988, the first Boomsday was announced. The Knoxville News Sentinel advertised that over three tons of fireworks would be set off from the Henley Street Bridge during the event in a show even bigger than the one on July 4 at Neyland Stadium during the World's Fair.
But it couldn't last.
After many years of fun, the end came in 2015. Or, as the Knox News headline called it, "doomsday."
Boomsday explodes in popularity
The original Boomsday was held in 1988 by the local radio station U-102 with the help of Pyro Shows, a group that coordinated fireworks displays. It was a hit. Around 50,000 were expected to attend, but more than double that came out, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported Sept. 11, 1988. Mayor Victor Ashe called it "terrific."
The next year, it was an even bigger success. A News Sentinel editorial from Sept. 6, 1989, offered "several words of advice" for anyone who'd missed the celebration: "Boomsday '90. Be there."
By 1990, the festivities included Burgerfest (a burger barbecue competition), musical performances, a boat parade and even skydiving from the Smoky Mountain SkyDivers. A News Sentinel article that year gave "boomers" some tips: "dress cool," "be cool," "act cool" and "stay cool."
Boomsday continued to grow. One piece of evidence: the multiplying number of Porta-Potties required from year to year, which surged from 12 the first year to more than 100 a decade in.
Boomsday goes out with a bang
Boomsday encountered some challenges around the early 2000s. In 2006, organizers experimented with holding Boomsday as a three-day event but ultimately lost money. The next year was better, but then the Great Recession happened. It continued − albeit at one point as the "Chrysler Jeep Boomsday Festival" for needed sponsor dollars.
In 2015, Knoxville's beloved Boomsday faced its demise. That July, Visit Knoxville Executive Director Kim Bumpas announced the organization wouldn't be able to continue hosting the event. For about 10 years, Visit Knoxville had been taking the lead on Boomsday, but the event at that point cost about $225,000 to hold. In 2014, it lost nearly $100,000, Bumpas told Knox News.
"I'm a longtime Knoxvillian too, and the history of Boomsday is as important to me as anyone else," she said. "It was not an easy decision, but it was a business decision."
One option was to start ticketing the event, which Visit Knoxville explored in 2014 by selling premium passes for attendees to watch from Neyland Drive and see a special concert lineup. Then came "a big curveball" from the Tennessee Department of Transportation. As a state highway, access to Neyland Drive couldn't be restricted. The concert headliner performed at Thompson-Boling Arena instead.
Ticketing the entire event wasn't a good option, because the capacity was only about 100,000 people, and moving it − or continuing to experiment at all, really − didn't seem like a solid prospect either considering the negative feedback surrounding the changes previous year. "We just didn't feel they would be well received enough to produce the return that we actually need from this event," Bumpas said.
The last Boomsday was held in 2015, themed "The Final Countdown."
Hayden Dunbar Evans is the storyteller reporter. Email: hayden.dunbar@knoxnews.com. Instagram: @knoxstoryteller.
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This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Why don't we have Boomsday anymore? Rise and fall of Labor Day tradition
