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Walnut Valley Festival Prepares for Land Rush

Winfield, Kansas—Organizers of Walnut Valley Festival will again offer participants in Land Rush the opportunity to preregister online in advance of the annual race to claim campsites before the start of this year’s festival, which will be held September 14-18.

Devoted fans of the festival have traditionally vied for the opportunity to claim their favorite camping spots early, before most festival-goers arrive on grounds. Walnut Valley Association (WVA), which organizes the festival, rolled out a new online process in 2019. Prospective Land Rush participants are offered the chance to pre-purchase camping and essentially add their names to an online queue. WVA will repeat the process this year, with preregistration open July 1-10. After preregistration, campers will be sent information on when and where they should plan to arrive for the initial Lineup on August 27. They will be processed into staging areas on that day, and will continue to arrive in advance of the actual Land Rush, scheduled for September 8.

One change that has been made is to abandon one of the steps that had traditionally been part of the process. The festival will no longer ask patrons to take part in “Number Day,” when festival staff gave patrons a specific number that denotes their place in the line entering the respective campgrounds

Grounds Director Rick Meyer: “With the price of gas being so high, we were looking at ways that we might be able to cut down on the number of trips our Land Rush participants might have to make. This way, they can come on August 27, leave their vehicle or a tarp on the spot they end up in during Lineup, and then not have to come back until Land Rush. They will need to pay the city camping fees ahead of time, but this way they will walk out of Lineup that day and have everything they need for Land Rush.”