Celebrate the second annual Piscataqua Waterfront Festival, a free family event on Saturday June 5, 2010, from 11:30 am – 4:30 pm. The festival features music, traditional maritime artisan demonstrations, free guided gundalow and more. (Continued below)

The day-loing celebration also includes museum tours, hands-on children’s activities, boats, booths, and displays by area businesses and non-profit organizations, and an heirloom plant sale of plants from the Moffatt-Ladd garden. Portsmouth Harbor Cruises will offer a special harbor tour at 3:00pm. Join us at the close of the festival at 4:45 pm with a concert by popular local musician Harvey Reid in the Moffatt-Ladd Warehouse which will transform from an activities space to a concert hall for the performance.  

A joint project of the non-profit Gundalow Company and the Moffatt-Ladd House and Garden, the festival brings the gundalow to the Moffatt-Ladd waterfront on Ceres Street, where it docks alongside Portsmouth Harbor Cruises’s Heritage. During the week preceding the festival, school groups from the region will enjoy free tours of the gundalow, activities in the Moffatt-Ladd Warehouse, and tours of the Moffatt-Ladd House, all focused on the place of maritime commerce in the city’s history.

The festival is designed to heighten awareness of our maritime history, contemporary water quality issues, boat building heritage and opportunities, marine management, water recreation, and conservation. The principal sponsor for this year’s festival is Ocean Bank. Other sponsors have made it possible for us to provide school group tours free of charge, these include Granite State Minerals, Tree House Toys, Portsmouth Regional Hospital, Moran Towing, and Izzy’s Frozen Yogurt. For more information, or to become a sponsor or rent booth space, please call Stephanie Rohwer or Barbara Ward at 430-7968.

Gundalows were once the primary mode of transporting cargo to tidewater towns in the region. Now the replica of this traditional watercraft, the Captain Adams, is used as a dockside platform for maritime heritage and environmental education. For information on the Gundalow Company’s "Celebrate Our Rivers" events, education programs, volunteering, or sponsorship opportunities please contact the Gundalow Company staff at (603) 433-9595.

The Moffatt-Ladd House and Garden, a National Historic Landmark, has been open to the public as an historic house museum since 1912, and is considered one of America’s finest Georgian mansions. The Moffatt-Ladd House and Garden is open daily for guided tours from mid-June through mid-October. The Garden and Warehouse may be rented for meetings, presentations, and special occasions. The Warehouse has full audio-video capabilities. For more information and this season’s schedule of programs, please visit the official web site or call (603) 430-7968.

Visitors can look forward to other activities on June 5. Taste the best area restaurants have to offer at the all-you-can-eat 26th annual Chowder Festival in Prescott Park. To celebrate 100 years, Historic New England will open all thirty-six of their historic sites for free on June 5. In Portsmouth, visit the Gov. John Langdon, Rundlet-May and Jackson Houses.