Toad Suck Daze is an annual community music, arts, and food festival in

Conway, Arkansas Conway is a city in the U.S. state of Arkansas and the county seat of Faulkner County, Arkansas, Faulkner County, located in the state's most populous Metropolitan Statistical Area, Central Arkansas. The city also serves as a regional shopping, ...

. It takes place every year in downtown Conway and has been celebrated since 1982.

Overview

The Toad Suck Daze festival attracts an estimated 160,000 visitors each year. Notable attractions at the event include music, arts and crafts, a variety of food, carnival rides, and toad races. For these races, visitors enter toads that they have brought from home or that were bred in the community for this purpose. The festival raises money to provide educational scholarships to

Faulkner County Faulkner County is a county located in the Central Arkansas region of the U.S. state of Arkansas. As of the 2020 census, the population was 123,498, making it the fifth most populous of Arkansas's 75 counties. The county seat and largest city ...

citizens. Over the past 28 years, the Toad Suck Daze committee has awarded over in scholarships and toward scholarship endowments. Toad Suck Concert Crowd

History

First organized in 1982 in Perry County (Toad Suck Park), the festival is held annually in downtown Conway, Arkansas (Faulkner County), during the first weekend in May. Originally held in Toad Suck at

Toad Suck Park Toad (also known as a hoptoad) is a common name for certain frogs, especially of the family Bufonidae, that are characterized by dry, leathery skin, short legs, and large bumps covering the parotoid glands. In popular culture (folk taxonomy), ...

on the Perry County side near the Toad Suck Ferry Lock and Dam, the festival was moved to the downtown location in 1990 due to flooding at the river, and it has remained in the downtown area ever since. The festival is run by volunteers from Conway and Faulkner County, including the local police and fire departments.

Name origin

The legend behind Toad Suck refers to the time when

steamboat A steamboat is a boat that is marine propulsion, propelled primarily by marine steam engine, steam power, typically driving propellers or Paddle steamer, paddlewheels. The term ''steamboat'' is used to refer to small steam-powered vessels worki ...

s traveled the

Arkansas River The Arkansas River is a major tributary of the Mississippi River. It generally flows to the east and southeast as it traverses the U.S. states of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. The river's source basin lies in Colorado, specifically ...

. When the water was not deep enough, the steamboats tied up where the Toad Suck Ferry Lock and Dam now spans the river near Conway. While the captain and crew waited, they loitered over refreshments at the local tavern. People living nearby commented, "They suck on the bottle 'til they swell up like toads."

References to Toad Suck Daze in popular culture

The Colbert Report ''The Colbert Report'' ( ) is an American late night television, late-night Late-night talk show, talk and news satire television program hosted by Stephen Colbert that aired four days a week on Comedy Central from October 17, 2005, to December ...

The Tonight Show ''The Tonight Show'' is an American late-night talk show that has been broadcast on NBC since 1954. The program has been hosted by six comedians: Steve Allen (1954–1957), Jack Paar (1957–1962), Johnny Carson (1962–1992), Jay Leno (1992–2 ...

References

{{reflist

External links

Downtown Conway guide

Toad Suck Daze
official website Tourist attractions in Faulkner County, Arkansas Conway, Arkansas Music festivals in Arkansas