On the Horizon is a New Glarus 360 feature looking beyond today’s headlines at larger economic, demographic, technological and cultural changes that may eventually reach our community. The goal is not to predict the future, but to recognize consequential changes while they are still far enough away to prepare for them.

For a few weekends every year, a stretch of First Street in downtown New Glarus becomes something very different.

Tents go up. Bands play. Tables and chairs appear. Food and drinks are close at hand. Residents run into neighbors. Visitors mingle with locals. People stand around long after they have finished whatever brought them downtown in the first place. For a few hours, perhaps a few days, downtown becomes not simply somewhere to shop, eat or pass through, but somewhere to be.

Then the festival ends. The tents come down. The chairs disappear. First Street becomes a street again.

What disappears with them is not just the festival infrastructure, but the temporary social space it created. The same downtown remains, along with its restaurants, taverns, shops and sidewalks, but the easy invitation to stop, sit, linger and spend time together largely goes away with the tents.

That cycle raises a larger question as New Glarus looks toward its future: Does the community have enough places where its people can simply gather?