From Sept. 18-21, 2014, the community will officially mark the 150th anniversary of the St. Albans Raid which promises to be a fun, lively, and educational event with something for everyone.
The four-day event will include a Civil War Costume Ball and dramatic re-enactments of the raid staged on the downtown park. Work has already begun on the dramatization and on the enormous sets and backdrops required to bring that fateful day to life. Descendants of the key players in the raid will attend this event and others.
Business leaders and downtown shop owners, as well as the municipal governments of St. Albans City and Town, will have important roles to play as all roll out the red carpet for visitors to this unique living-history event.
The academy building overlooking the central green, and from which school children watched history unfold 150 years ago, is now the St. Albans Historical Museum, a prime mover in the planned commemoration as it has been in three consecutive years’ Civil War re-enactors’ encampment also held on Taylor Park.
The old village’s green, preserved and cherished today as it was then, has long since become the city’s Taylor Park. It will be the primary site around which St. Albans will revisit its past.
The community, although there were devastating fires in the decades after the raid, still has landmarks from that day long ago. These are sites that visitors and area residents alike are being invited to see during walking tours. The St. Albans House, a large wooden structure built in 1840, has been returned to its original state. It was one of four places where the Confederate raiders lodged prior to the raid. And, St. Albans itself has completed an ambitious, multi-million dollar downtown streetscape project and has undertaken a park renovation project just in time for the 2014 events.
