What: Amboy Territorial Days celebration.
When: July 10, noon to midnight; July 11, parade starts at 10 a.m. at Amboy Middle School, park opens at 11 a.m.; July 12, races begin at 8:30 a.m., park opens at 11 a.m. Everything ends July 12 at 6 p.m.
Where: 21400 N.E. 399th St., Amboy.
Cost: Free, but signature events at Waser Arena cost $5.
On the Web: tdays.org
The Amboy Territorial Park is an odd duck: a privately owned space that serves as Amboy’s only public park. It is 18 acres and routinely open to the public from dawn to dusk.
The park is owned and managed by a nonprofit board of directors and maintained entirely through event ticket sales and rentals for things like weddings, reunions and camp-outs, according to board member Diana Requa. The park is independent of any municipal, county or state budget, Requa said.
The all-volunteer board of directors is always looking for help; meetings are held at 7 p.m. on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month at the park, 21400 N.E. 399th St. The public is always invited, Requa said.
What: Amboy Territorial Days celebration.
When: July 10, noon to midnight; July 11, parade starts at 10 a.m. at Amboy Middle School, park opens at 11 a.m.; July 12, races begin at 8:30 a.m., park opens at 11 a.m. Everything ends July 12 at 6 p.m.
Where: 21400 N.E. 399th St., Amboy.
Cost: Free, but signature events at Waser Arena cost $5.
On the Web: tdays.org
AMBOY — Julie Lynch won the first-ever parade trophy given out at Amboy’s second-ever hometown celebration.
That was in 1962, and Lynch vividly remembers her prizewinning parade entry: a covered wagon driven by dolls in prairie dresses. Lynch has another cherished memory from the same era, she added: In first grade, she used to chase a boy named Craig all around the school yard. “It took a while, but I got him,” she said.
Craig and Julie Lynch, Amboy residents all their lives, now organize the Saturday morning parade for Amboy’s Territorial Days Celebration, which starts today and runs through the weekend. They do it because they love this place and want to see its heritage passed down the generations, they said.
Amboy and north Clark County were hurt pretty badly by the Great Recession, Craig said, but it’s on the upswing again — and there’s no better way to show it than with a great big parade.
“It’s been a family tradition and a community tradition. We’re trying to get the kids back into it,” Julie said.
“And their kids, and their kids, and their grandkids,” Craig added.
Admission to the overall Territorial Days event is free — and so is parade participation if you’re under 12 — but some central events do cost a few bucks. That’s because the private park hosting this annual celebration — and providing a year-round central greenspace for this remote Clark County town, which isn’t really a town at all — is supported entirely through ticket sales at events like this, according to Diana Requa of the Amboy Territorial Park board of directors. The second weekend in July is the park’s biggest fundraiser of the year, Requa said.
It’s also the biggest fun of the year, if a visit to a final-preparations meeting was any indication. On a recent Tuesday night, the couple dozen people who make up the celebration steering committee met in a shady shelter alongside the park’s sunny lawn on Northeast 399th street to review what’s in store this weekend:
• Beer garden. “There will be beer,” Brian Ackley succinctly put it. And Angry Orchard cider on tap too, he said, because “that’s the biggest thing since sliced bread.”
The Amboy Territorial Park is an odd duck: a privately owned space that serves as Amboy's only public park. It is 18 acres and routinely open to the public from dawn to dusk.
The park is owned and managed by a nonprofit board of directors and maintained entirely through event ticket sales and rentals for things like weddings, reunions and camp-outs, according to board member Diana Requa. The park is independent of any municipal, county or state budget, Requa said.
The all-volunteer board of directors is always looking for help; meetings are held at 7 p.m. on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month at the park, 21400 N.E. 399th St. The public is always invited, Requa said.
• Carnival. For the first time in a few years, the celebration will feature a traveling carnival. When the Great Recession hit and gas prices soared, Requa said, carnival companies — which aren’t hired by the venue but make money on their own ticket sales — lost interest in traveling to remote spots such as Amboy. Now that’s changed, she said, and a carnival will indeed be on hand to turn visitors upside-down.
• Children’s Arts and Crafts Fair, including voting for favorites.
• Citizen of the Year presentation, queen’s coronation, 6 p.m. today on the Olmstead Stage.
• Live music. Country, blues and western swing; classic rock on Saturday night and traditional gospel on Sunday morning. All shows are free on the Olmstead Stage.
• Lawn mower races. $5 admission gets you into the action-packed Indianapolis 500 of north Clark County on Sunday afternoon.
• Mt. Tum Tum Fun Run, Sunday morning. The run includes 5K and 10K races, the shorter just for fun and the second more serious. Registration is $25. For kids 8 and younger there’s a free Little Logger Lap, which stays at Territorial Park.
• Teen dance. A disc jockey will spin hot hits tonight on the Olmstead Stage.
• Logging show. The centerpiece of it all — drawing the biggest crowds — is a Saturday afternoon stuffed with skill contests and demonstrations of local logging heritage. Among many scheduled activities are pole climbing and chain-saw races; birling (competitive log rolling, with contestants trying to tip each other into water); ax throwing (20 feet away from the target, with a minimum 2-foot-long ax); double-buck sawing races (teams use a two-person saw to cut through a 20-inch log); obstacle courses; and a kids-vs-loggers tug of war.
And, of course:
• Bingo.
