A well-established flea market in Carbon County will continue to run, just under a different organization.

The Big Creek Grange, which for several decades ran the flea market, will no longer host the event at 275 Grange Road, Franklin Township.However, because the community has always shown an overwhelming response to the event, the Franklin Township Volunteer Fire Company has agreed to host the event moving forward, member John Gula said."Members of the fire company kicked the idea around and decided that if we were going to host the event, we want to get the word out there that it's the same weekend as when the grange would have been hosting theirs," Gula said. "Our goal is to hopefully make this one of the larger outdoor flea markets in the area."Gula said the fire company will have advertisements throughout northeastern Pennsylvania. It will serve breakfast sandwiches and lunch in the morning. All proceeds will benefit the fire company, he said.Willie Kemmerer, a member of the grange for over 50 years, said, "It just got to the point the older members couldn't do it. We made a motion to give it up.""The fire company found out about it and they want to take it over," Kemmerer said. "They have the kitchen right inside and they can have everything we had and more."He added, "I'm glad they're going to take it over because we have some faithful people that wanted to set up. I'm glad they took it over."Kemmerer said the grange started up the flea market back in the 1980s, and it continued to grow every year to the point where "if you didn't get there before 7 in the morning, you didn't get a parking space.""At one time we had like 150 vendors there," he said. "We used to have people in the beginning three deep waiting for food, and they ate, they really ate."It used to get so full, Kemmerer said, that customers used to have to park on the side of the road to come in."The last three years, it's been getting less and less," he said. "Less people coming, less people setting up vendors, a lot of them died off."Kemmerer said the grange was originally organized in 1913.