Past Royal Ladies exhibit at museum

As the Autumn Leaf Festival approaches, Leavenworth area residents can take a look back at the past royal ladies before current Royal Lady Pat Rutledge takes her place on the float.

For the month of September, the Upper Valley Museum is featuring an exhibit on the royal ladies, with the scrapbooks, photographs, and of course, the dresses on display.

"The public enjoys coming here and seeing how this evolved," said Arleen Blackburn, museum board member and 1987 Royal Lady. "A lot of the ladies came up here and helped put up the exhibit. They help every year. The festival means a lot and people like that the Royal Lady is an older person. They feel they can relate to an older person inviting them to Leavenworth."

The festival selects an older woman, referred to as "mature youth," Blackburn said. Eight past royal ladies helped set up the exhibit this year and several people have come through to look at the exhibit so far.

"I think it's amazing. People walk in who have been to Autumn Leaf before and they are just amazed at how much we've gathered and how much we've put out," said Anne Koenig, museum program coordinator and 1983 Royal Lady. "A lot of people don't know much about the royal lady, they've just seen her on the float or in the parade so now they get to look through this and really get the history of all of the past royal ladies and I think that's neat because we've lost a lot of them who have passed away."

Blackburn's book of all of the Autumn Leaf buttons, sold in support of the festival, is on display, as well as her collection of the Sonnenschein newspapers, which later became magazines.

"From the beginning, the royal ladies did their own scrapbook page," Blackburn said. "So we have the scrapbook with all of the ladies, starting with the first year in 1964."

When the Bavarian theme was adopted in the town of Leavenworth, the festival began. However, the dresses were only made to be Bavarian in the 1990s. Prior, dresses ranged from pioneer style, as seen in the first year with Martha Jensen, to flower and leaf prints.

"The first one, she was more of a pioneer type and then it grew to be Autumn and fall colors," Blackburn said. "But there is a criteria. Now they have to be Bavarian. The lady gets to chose the dress from there."

Almost all of the dresses are on display, except for a few that were never given to the collection.

Blackburn used to store the dresses at her home but they are now stored at the museum.