The Town of Barrington started a community “Peeper Festival” in the early 1990’s, and a small race was born.   At the first event people weren’t the runners ….. they used real peeper frogs!  As you may have guessed It was fun, but chaotic.   A couple years later, the race duties were transferred to the Greater Barrington Chamber of Commerce.

Lead by a few members of the Chamber, the first races were small but grew to 200+ very quickly.  In one of the first races they handed Popsicle sticks to the runners with their times on them!  Meanwhile, in the early 90’s, the Annual High School Senior Scholarship Fund was started and it was looking for a revenue  source.  The chamber saw this as an opportunity to combine the two, and signed on to make the Peeper 5K the main contributor of its annual scholarships. 

For the past 25+ years, we’ve provided 2 High School Seniors with $1,000 each towards the school of their choice; along with 1 returning recipient with receiving a $500 award. In recent years, we have updated to 3 Seniors receiving $1,000 each.  We’ve come a long way over the years!   Our hopes are that the Peeper will become a big enough event to increase our award monies, or the number of scholarships given out!

Our “little” Peeper 5K has grown up. It’s now an officially sanctioned race course by the U.S. Track & Field Association.  To manage times, we hire a racing company to log in all entrant bib numbers; we even have emergency ham operators “calling” the leaders from along the course. The “Timed Runners” come from all over New England to run this race to log their times. But our race is really about community and tradition. So many of you – families, individuals, schools, organizations, and local businesses – have run, walked, donated, and volunteered to support our cause. Thank you!

We look forward to many more successful “Peepers”, and hope you get your sneakers on and come join the fun!