After years of planning, the town of Jaffrey is celebrating its 250th birthday in the coming year, with a slate of events throughout the entirety of 2023, both leading up to and beyond Aug. 17, the actual day of Jaffrey’s incorporation.

The town formed a 250th Anniversary Committee in 2018, headed by Steve Pelkey. Pelkey is no stranger to large-scale events in Jaffrey, as for years he helped to organize the Jaffrey Festival of Fireworks as the head of Atlas Pyrovision.

“This work took nearly two years of planning and reaching out to sponsors,” Pelkey said.

Pelkey said the work has paid off in a year’s worth of activities, with something for everyone.

“The great part of doing a lot of pre-planning is getting to assign different highlighted topics over the eight-month celebration leading to the commemoration,” Pelkey said.

According to Pelkey, the first stages were intense, as the committee worked to establish a website and social media presence and pull together organizers with a variety of interests and specialties.

The celebration will culminate on the weekend of the official anniversary in August, with a commemoration ceremony at the Jaffrey Center Meetinghouse on Aug. 17, an anniversary parade on Aug. 19 capped with a grand finale concert and fireworks show, with a location to be announced in February.

Town Manager Jon Frederick, also a member of the 250th Anniversary Committee, said the parade is expected to be a major event of the year, lasting about two hours and including floats, bands and marchers from a variety of town organizations. Leading up to the August commemoration, each month includes at least one event which will be tied to the celebrations.

Events begin in January, with the “Mount Climb Challenge,” where Jaffrey residents are encouraged to take a climb up Mount Monadnock, with a banner available at the state park entrance, and take and submit a picture with it at the summit.

“We wanted to feature the mountain in some way, because it is iconic to Jaffrey, but we didn’t want to do a specific climb and flood the mountain,” Historical Society member Bruce Hill said.

A jubilee ball at Hidden Hills is set for Jan. 14 and a Jaffrey-inspired art exhibit at the Jaffrey Civic Center opens Jan. 27. Also planned to start in January are monthly history talks, running through April, on topics including famous Jaffrey figures, notable women and the area’s Indigenous people.

The first historical program, on Jan. 12 at 7 p.m. at the Civic Center, produced by Hill and fellow Historical Society member Rob Stephenson, is on the town’s past anniversary celebrations, including photographs from anniversary parades dating back as far as 1873 and as recently as 1973. Artifacts such as program books and souvenirs will be on display.

Another year-long endeavor is a project collecting multiple generations who have all graduated or attended Conant High School, which will be added to the “Conant Generations” page on the Jaffrey Historical Society website at jaffreyhistory.org.

In the summertime, there is planned a tribute to veterans, with a parade and ceremony in June, and a fireman’s muster in July, as well as a special series of Concerts on the Common, sponsored by Monadnock Disposal Service.

Several traditional town events, including the St. Patrick’s Day parade, Memorial Day and Earth Day, have been tied into anniversary celebrations this year

For information about anniversary events, visit jaffrey250. com or the Jaffrey 250 Facebook page.

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