Espanola has a keepsake after hosting this year’s Pumpkin and Fibre Arts Festival. The members of the HGTV show Carver Kings were invited to this year’s festival and as a thank you, the actors made a memorial bench for the town. Part of the bench explains how the town got its Spanish-sounding name. Legend has it French explorers in the area were surprised to hear Ojibway Indians speaking Spanish. The story goes the Ojibway brought back a Spanish-speaking woman with them after canoeing in the deep south of the U.S. After listening to the First Nation people speak Spanish, the explorers named the village they were in “Espagnole”.
