Celebrating New Albany and Plain Township

New Albany Founders Day goes back to 1976, when the New Albany Historical Society pulled together a celebration for the nation’s bicentennial. A small town, a handful of volunteers, and a patriotic reason for the community to come together. Fifty years later, as the country celebrates its semiquincentennial, the volunteers are still at it, and the party has only gotten bigger.

The festival has been held all over New Albany over the years, from school grounds to parking lots to its new home at Rose Run Park. The parade has wound its way down just about every major street in what was once a village and is now a city. Today, about 7,000 people come out every year for the parade, food, rides, vendors, and the kind of afternoon that reminds you why you live here.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of that first celebration, and we’re spending it the way it should be spent: looking around at what this community has built together. Every grand marshal who’s led the parade, every organization and school group we’ve honored, every local business and volunteer who have supported and helped make this special occasion possible. Fifty years of community isn’t one story, it’s hundreds of them, and they all started here.