THE 1, THE ONLY
People celebrate in Stephentown
STEPHENTOWN, N.Y. » For the first time in the town’s history, Stephentown is holding a town-wide function featuring 30- plus events over the weekend.
The Celebrate Stephentown celebration began Friday night after six months of preparations. The signature event Friday was the unveiling of a new “Welcome to the Only Stephentown on Earth” sign at Town Hall. In 1984, the town celebrated two-hundred years as a town by placing signs over the town symbolizing Stephentown as the only Stephentown on Earth, but after a number of them had been stolen over the years, the town decided to stop placing them all over.
In correlation with Celebrate Stephentown, the town decided to bring them back. Over the next month, the town will install signs in various parts of the town.
There were two reasons to create Celebrate Stephentown, according to a co- organizer.
“One of the problems was the individual groups in town were having trouble drawing [ people] to their own events, so we came up with the idea that if we did all of our events in the same weekend, we can keep everybody in town and share the wealth. Basically, start working together for the good of the town,” said Scott Menhinich, president of the library. “The other is there’s not too much going on in Stephentown. We don’t have a fourth of July parade or fireworks or anything to hang our hat on, so this was something where we wanted to build
local pride and have something in town could say this is our event.”
Some of the events that took place Saturday included a morning hike at Wyomanock Preserve, an open house at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church and community corn boil at Stephentown elementary school with Kinderhook Creek Farm.
It made sense for the town to come together to celebrate.
“Rather than do an expensive parade or do something — like, we used to do a block dance in Stephentown — rather than do that we decided to have a promote and place strategy where we said everybody do an event, do whatever you want, charge money, have tickets, do a fundraiser, whatever. Build your business, get everybody in your door and see what you do, and we will do it like that. So basically, all of these folks planned their own events,” said Menhinich.
Menhinich hopes Celebrate Stephentown becomes an annual tradition. On Sunday there are plenty of events for area residents to enjoy, including an early bird hike at Chestnut Hill, a buy one, get one sale at Down in Denver Books and a melon tasting at The Berry Batch.
There’s also a school supply giveaway at Gardner’s Ice Cream & Coffee Shoppe where Neil and Susan Gardner will give away 10 backpacks full of school supplies Sunday at 7 p.m.
Visit https://celebratestephentown.com/ for more information.