Suzanne Marchant, of North Bend, sat down for a few moments to take a load off her feet, clad in brightly striped rubber boots.

The retired Blossom Gulch Elementary School principal was one of about 30 or so volunteers enjoying the sunshine at Shore Acres State Park Saturday afternoon. She was working, too, stringing Christmas lights for the 22nd-annual holiday lights display at Shore Acres. Many helpers belonged to area clubs or were Coos Bay firefighters, but Marchant had come alone.

“I call myself a freelancer,” she said. “This is my third week out here this year.”

It takes about 1,500 people more than four or five weekends to do the set up. This year they are hanging about a quarter of a million lights.

“The last two weeks it was pouring,” Marchant said. “It’s still fun. You meet interesting people. The dedicated people are here in the rain.”

The park, which was once a private estate of pioneer lumberman and shipbuilder Louis J. Simpson, is located on 743 acres south of Charleston, sandwiched between Sunset Bay and Cape Arago state parks. It includes seven acres of formal gardens.

Helping out Saturday was David Barnhart, a school teacher who has been traveling from Gleneden Beach for the last 12 years, staying in a motel every weekend volunteers are needed.

“It’s a nice group of people out here to work with,” Barnhart said, loading colored lights into a wheelbarrow. “I enjoy going to see the lights with family and friends.”

Barnhart squinted through the sunlight streaming into the open door of the shed that stores light sculptures and lights during the year.

“There have been some very rainy days, but most of the time we have good weather,” he said.

Wheelbarrow helper Kenn Kennedy and his wife, Betty , moved to Coos Bay in 1995, and a year later joined Friends of Shore Acres, which partners with state parks to present the holiday lights display.

“We love Shore Acres. It’s a special place,” Kennedy said. “We moved here and said, ‘Well, we can’t buy it, so the next best thing is to volunteer.’”

Last year, Kennedy discovered stormy weather can be more than a minor inconvenience.

“Two huge firs blew down in the pond,” he said. “Then we had to come back out here and try to put it together.”

Organizers have made small improvements over the years to make decorating the park easier, including stakes pushed into the soil at the corners of the hedges.

“It was just a nightmare before,” said helper Shirley Champagne-Harris. “We used to use twist ties.”

The hedges in the English garden are all laid out with symmetric lighting, according to David Bridgham.

“I’ve flown over it at night. It looks like a tapestry,” he said.

Bridgham, who has chaired the event with his wife, Shirley, since its inception, was working in the pond area with Coos Bay-North Bend Rotary Club member Jim Hough and his wife, Cindy. Bridgham said 25 different organizations decorated Christmas trees this year and signed up to serve refreshments in the Garden House.

“We have a waiting list,” he said.

Firefighters from Coos Bay Fire Department decorated the Garden House that has been there since the early 1900s. Saturday they were using ladders to lift a sculpture of a pelican onto the roof.

On Friday, more pelican sculptures had been lifted atop tall poles that inmates from Shutter Creek Correctional Institution had set into the ground.

“They’re a big part of it. We couldn’t do it without them,” Bridgham said.

Sculptures of seashore flora and creatures, including moving displays, have been added over the years. This year almost all the lights have been converted to LED lights.

“That’s going to save a lot of money,” Shirley said.

“We started in 1987 with 6,000 miniature lights and one Christmas tree,” she said. “We tried doing a tree lighting, but several hundred people showed up in the dark. We didn’t do that again.”

Now the holiday display, held from Thanksgiving Day through New Year’s Eve, draws 40,000 to 50,000 visitors per season.

Shirley said there are more volunteers than usual this year, which is a good thing since many of the longtime volunteers are getting up there in years.

“Actually, I’m not sure how many volunteers we’ve worn out,” she laughed.

Kathy Loya and her mother, Anne Schiller, were volunteering for the first time Saturday. Loya handed Schiller a string of lights attached to the end of a pole over a bush.

“We started out easy with rose bushes,” Loya said. “Every tree and bush has a tag on it that tells how many strings and what color to use. It’s all on computer.

“I love seeing the lights,” Loya said. “Now we can’t wait to come out.”