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It’s June already, and you know what? The 2025 Elizabethton car shows have begun, and things are a bit different this year. Instead of being held downtown, the kickoff to this year’s season was held this past Saturday evening at Elizabethton High School due to Hurricane Helene playing havoc with things downtown. The closing of the Broad Street Bridge — which is scheduled to reopen the first of July — has resulted in much of the traffic that crosses the bridge to be rerouted downtown, which makes it hard to have a car show on Saturday evenings.

In fact, the car show had its beginning at the Elizabethton High School track in 1982. The event was sponsored by McDonald’s and was called “Happy Days.” The first event was a moderate success but stirred enough interest to have another one the next year. In the late 1980s the car show would move from the track to the student parking lot of Elizabethton High School.

For some participants, once a year was not enough, so every Saturday night some of the car owners started driving down to the Ingles parking lot to just hang out and show their cars. Since there was a large area of the parking lot that was not being used, this was the ideal place to park and watch the traffic go by on West Elk Avenue. But in a very short time, interest in the old cars grew and many people would park nearby and take a stroll by the cars. Within a few years, the number of cars and people in the once vacant lot became so numerous that the store owners began to complain that there were no places for their customers to park — and they were right.

Eventually, the Carter County Car Club would reach an agreement with the City of Elizabethton and the weekly car show would move to its new home in the downtown area. This has worked well, and every Saturday evening in the summer months the sidewalks are full of patrons and car enthusiasts.

The car show is unique in that it not only draws people who like cars, but it is a good place to meet up with old friends and have a good time on a Saturday evening. Many of the participants who came downtown to the car shows traveled from many miles away to showcase their chrome beauties. Hundreds of spectators showed up each week to literally “walk down memory lane.”

Car show folks have indicated that when the Broad Street Bridge reopens, they plan to go before City Council and seek permission to move the Saturday evening event, which runs through October, back to downtown. Of course, there will be some opposed to the move, as there always are.

But the car show has become a part of downtown. It draws a lot of people on Saturday evening to downtown, many of whom are from surrounding communities. It is good for tourism.

The weekly cruise-in begins at 5 p.m. and continues to 9 p.m. and raises funds for local children’s charities. For the time being, the cruise-ins will be held in the Elizabethton High School parking lot. It is a family-oriented event and normally draws 125 to 150 cars weekly, plus many more people.

We all are looking forward to the day when the Broad Street Bridge will be reopened and traffic will be zooming up and down that part of Broad Street again. But hopefully it will be good news for downtown as more events can be held and the car show will be back on Saturday evenings.