Bovina Bicentennial Celebration

The Town of Bovina will celebrate its 200th birthday on July 30 and 31, 2022. Though first settled in the 1790s, the Town of Bovina didn’t come into being until February 25, 1820, when the New York State Legislature passed the act that created the town. Two hundred years later, plans were well underway to celebrate this milestone event, but COVID-19 had other ideas. The celebration was cancelled in 2020 and postponed until 2022.

The celebration will kick off on Saturday, July 30 at 10 am with a parade heading from Coulter Brook Road through the Bovina Center hamlet, concluding on McIntosh’s flat next to the creamery. The City of Albany Pipe Band will help start the parade. There will be floats, antique fire apparatus (from the Bovina Fire Department as well as from some neighboring departments), horses, antique cars and tractors, and will conclude with a display by the Lake Delaware Boys Camp. Their Drum & Bugle Corps and a Crack Platoon will demonstrate its routines at the end of the parade.

From noon until 4 pm, the Bovina Bicentennial Festival will take place on the McIntosh Flat, with food vendors, local businesses and organizations offering their products for sale, children’s games, and demonstrations, including blacksmithing, butter making and spinning.

At 2 pm, the Bovina vintage baseball team, the Bovina Dairymen will take on the Fleischmanns’ Mountain Athletics Club on Creamery Field (1396 County Highway 6) in Bovina.

The festival on the flat will conclude with a program of local music from 4:30 to 6:30, featuring Ira McIntosh, John “Chico” Finn, The College Farm, Julian Fleischer and other Bovina based talent. And if you want more music, Livestock is offering a live concert at 124 Bob Hall Road in Bovina, at 8 pm, with The College Farm as one of the performers.

The weekend will wrap-up on Sunday, July 31 with a special service by the Bovina United Presbyterian Church on the McIntosh Flat at 10:30. At noon there will be a potluck picnic under the tent to visit with old friends and meet new neighbors. Bring a dish to pass and your own plates and silverware etc.

Parking will be limited during the celebration. From 8 am to noon, parking will not be allowed along the parade route on County Route 6, but visitors are welcome to park behind the church or at the creamery, as directed by parking volunteers. McIntosh Flat is an actively used hay field. To save wear and tear on the field, parking will not be allowed there. Parking will be allowed on the parade route after the conclusion of the parade. Car-pooling is strongly encouraged. Celebration organizers request that attendees not bring their dogs.

Since 2019, a group of knitters/crocheters, coordinated by Susan Yelavich, have been working on the Bovina Bicentennial afghan. It will be raffled off at the festival, proceeds to benefit the Bovina Public Library. In another art project, Brooke Alderson has recruited ten local artists to create paintings of buildings in the hamlet that no longer exist or have been changed. These will be placed at the site of the structures during the celebration.

Celebration organizers are grateful for all the support from the community. They would particularly like to thank Roger McIntosh, the McIntosh family and Molly Brannen for use of the flat for the festival. They also want to thank the Livestock Foundation for providing parking and to Susan LaFever for the use of Lake Jillienne to stage the parade. And thank you to the Delhi Telephone Company for providing free wi-fi at the site on the 30th.

For further information, visit the Town of Bovina Bicentennial website.