SITE SOLD — Country music singer Neal McCoy entertains the crowd during a previous Jamboree in the Hills concert. The land on which the Jamboree had been held recently was sold. -- Eric Ayres

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Since 2018, the former Jamboree in the Hills site has been silent after the owner, Live Nation, announced a “hiatus.” The site is now under new ownership, but it remains to be seen what activities will take place there in the future.

For more than four decades, the hills around St. Clairsville and Belmont and Morristown have echoed with country music during the yearly Jamboree in the Hills festival, which drew celebrants and singers from across the county and birthed famous traditions such as the “redneck run” to secure places to enjoy the music.

Now, the Barack family of Bellaire has purchased the site for $1.3 million and is exploring options for the 210-acre land along U.S. Route 40.

“There’s a lot of possibilities,” Roger Barack said.

“We don’t have any definitive plan,” his son Cody Barack said. “It’s too valuable of an asset to leave it stand vacant.”

He said the family will accept any assistance from local officials as they determine the future of this property.

“We’d look forward to any thoughts or any assistance that could be provided by Belmont County Port Authority or the board of tourism,” he said. “They may have some thoughts or some ideas or be able to offer some type of assistance in promoting or developing it into some venue.”

While the location has become well-known as an entertainment venue, the Barack family’s agreement with Live Nation could preclude some options in that direction.

“There is a deed restriction, but there are also private agreements that we have with Live Nation, so that deed restriction is not set in stone,” Cody Barack said. “Live Nation, they get a bad rep from the public, but they were excellent to work with and I anticipate possibly working with them in the future in some capacity with this site, so everything’s on the table at this point.”

Cody Barack would not speculate when the public might hear an official announcement about the site’s future.

In the short term, the new owners will begin maintenance on the land after it has been left mostly fallow.

The family owns several other properties around Belmont County, but whether they might be used in conjunction also is undecided.

Belmont County Commissioner Jerry Echemann said the county would like to see that property in use again.

“We always had hope that Jamboree might come back, but as time went on it became more obvious that they weren’t going to come back. In that sense, we’re glad that there was a sale of the property,” he said.

Echemann said that, from a county commissioner standpoint, he’d like to see some sort of industrial development

“We have a port authority and the commission as well will be standing by to assist them in any way possible if they decide that’s the round they want to go,” he said, “but I would hope something would happen sooner rather than later, within the next year or two.”

Meanwhile, a nearby campground has been converted by the Dutton family to host a new county music festival, Blame My Roots. Like many other festivals, the event was canceled in 2020 by the COVID-19 pandemic, but will be held again this summer.