PENDLETON — The city of Pendleton’s Fall Harvest Festival on the Village Green attracted it largest crowd ever this year, according to officials.

According to Jean Vegod of the Pendleton Business Association, who has been in charge of the event for the past two years, the 10th annual festival drew an estimated 6,000 attendants Saturday.

Along with 66 local vendors selling a wide variety of merchandise, the festival included the “Bubba Bake-off,” a men-only cake-baking contest. All men were invited to enter the contest with their cake, and the awards given ranged from most macho to best Pendleton theme.

After the award presentation, each of the 12 cake entries was auctioned off to raise a total of $200. The proceeds will be donated to Supper On Us Pendleton, a local charity similar to Meals on Wheels.

Another charitable organization, Ride for Raptors, conducted their bicycling tour to raise money dedicated to wildlife preservation. Also featured were old-fashioned children’s games, such as tug-of-war and sack races, which were overseen by 25 student volunteers from Clemson University.

Dana Irvin of Seneca, who was selling handmade jewelry from Dana’s Designs, was a little disappointed that there weren’t more people visiting the event Saturday.

“The Web site said that about 3,000 people usually attend, and I didn’t think that there were that many people, so it was less than expected,” Irvin said.

She speculated that the chance of rain may have been to blame, however, and said that everyone who did attend seemed to really being enjoying it.

Other vendors did not seem to notice how many people attended this year compared with other years. Darrel and Debbie Trickett of Anderson were pleased with the amount of people who came out Saturday.

“It was bigger than we expected, and we got as much business as we had hoped for,” Debbie Trickett said. “This was our first event, so we wouldn’t have wanted anything any bigger than this.”

Andy Vicker of Anderson said he always enjoys coming to the festival.

“It’s just a good time, and I can bring my whole family out,” he said. “There is always something for everybody to do here.”

He said he has “never seen so many people at the fall festival” as there were this year.