The annual Snowflake Groundhog Breakfast will be held from 5 to 8 a.m. on Saturday, Feb. 7, at the Snowflake High School cafeteria.
The event is hosted by the town, with members of the town council serving the free breakfast of ground hog (sausage) cooked by the Snowflake Fire Department and biscuits cooked by the Snowflake-Taylor Police Department.
The Groundhog Breakfast tradition began 52 years ago with the Eugene Flake family on Feb. 2, 1963, the day the groundhog traditionally comes out of hibernation. If he doesn’t see his shadow then spring is here, but if he does, there will be six more weeks of winter. The Flakes’ breakfast included biscuits, gravy, pork sausage and cocoa.
The late Glen Flake, Eugene’s son, said it was such a success with the family that a few friends and neighbors were invited, and soon they had so many friends and neighbors they moved the breakfast to their patio.
Later, two or three loads of firewood would be brought into the street, and a huge bonfire would be going by 3 a.m.
Breakfast was cooked on coals, with many of the townspeople attending. Eventually, everyone in Snowflake and Taylor was invited, and they were serving several hundred people between 5 and 8 a.m.
When the Flakes were called to serve a mission for the LDS church, the Town of Snowflake picked up the tradition and has kept it going since that time.
