Grove City Parks & Recreation is throwing open the gates of Century Village for a free Olde Time Fair on Saturday, Aug. 22, running from noon to 4 p.m. with carnival games, carousel rides, food vendors and a chance to watch baseball played by 1860s rules. The event welcomes all ages and doubles as one of the year's marquee tie-ins to the nation's upcoming 250th anniversary, with organizers folding an America 250 theme directly into the day's schedule.
According to Grove City Ohio Government, the fair takes place at Century Village at Fryer Park, 4185 Orders Rd., and includes a self-guided stroll through the site's historic buildings alongside live entertainment, hands-on crafts and old-time carnival games. Admission is free. The event's official schedule, posted by the City of Grove City, expands on the self-guided tour, pointing visitors toward six featured structures: the original Orders Road Schoolhouse, a 19th-century train depot, historic log cabins, a general store, a blacksmith shop and a farm museum, with live music from The Village Pickers Band filling the village from 2 to 4 p.m.
Cowboy-Themed Quartet Opens the Day
The fair kicks off with the America 250 Red, White & Blue Toadstool Shadow Quartet performing from noon to 2 p.m. The band, which performs across Ohio under a rotating cast of thematic personas ranging from gnomes to pirates, received a 2025–2026 Artist Opportunity grant from the Ohio Arts Council specifically to develop a family-friendly patriotic cowboy quartet act built for 2026 town festivals and county fairs statewide, per the group's own background materials.
Once the quartet wraps up, the Ohio Village Muffins take the field at Century Village for a vintage baseball game running from 2 to 4 p.m. Formed in 1981 by the Ohio History Connection, the Muffins play by 1860s-style rules: underhand pitching, no gloves, outs recorded on first-bounce catches, and shield-front uniforms true to the era. The team's name borrows from 19th-century baseball slang describing casual, error-prone ballplayers, a nod to the amateur pastime era before the sport turned professional after the Civil War.
A Village Built From Salvaged History
Century Village is maintained in partnership with the Southwest Franklin County Historical Society, which was established in 1982 by 27 charter members and today manages three local historical properties, including Century Village, the Grove City Welcome Center and Museum, and the 1840s Grant-Sawyer Home. The society preserves history across Grove City, Urbancrest and four neighboring townships.
One of the village's landmark buildings, the Kegg-Kientz Log House, was originally built between 1860 and 1880 on Beatty Road before being donated to the city in 1997. Per the Historical Marker Database, the log home was dismantled and stored for six years before local Boy Scouts and inmates from the Orient Correctional Institution reassembled it on site between 2003 and 2004. Elsewhere in the village, a dinner bell mounted at the Jones Barn was manufactured between 1882 and 1894 by the C. S. Bell Company of Hillsboro, Ohio, a foundry that shipped more than 20,000 bells worldwide, including some deployed on U.S. Navy vessels during World War II, according to the Southwest Franklin County Historical Society's own account of the artifact.
Part of a Statewide Semiquincentennial Push
The fair's America 250 branding connects Grove City to a much larger statewide effort. The America 250-Ohio Commission has designated more than 100 local municipalities and townships as official America 250-Ohio Communities, tasked with passing resolutions and hosting commemorations through 2026, backed by roughly $1 million in commission grants for community projects. The Olde Time Fair also fits into Century Village's routine calendar; the site regularly hosts public open house events on the fourth Saturday of each month from May through September, with guided tours available year-round for student and adult groups for a small fee.
Fryer Park, where Century Village sits, spans 110 acres and also includes Rotary Lake, the all-accessible space-themed Discovery Frontier playground, and eight softball diamonds, making it Grove City's largest municipal park. That scale mirrors the city's own growth: U.S. Census Bureau estimates put Grove City's population above 43,000 residents in 2024–2025, up from 41,252 in the 2020 census and just 28,708 in 2000. The Olde Time Fair, and Century Village itself, offer the fast-growing Columbus suburb a fixed point of reference to its 19th-century roots even as new subdivisions continue to reshape the landscape around it.
