Though originally planned to be a singular event the Saturday and Sunday following Independence Day, organizers transitioned to a year-long menu of community-led events, in part due to budget and resource constraints, organizers said.
75th Anniversary Committee Chair Pete Bates said the community has “stepped up” to provide residents and families multiple opportunities to celebrate.
- Fairborn City Schools has several events, including a community mixer from 5 to 7 p.m. on Aug. 9 at Fairborn High School, and a Powder Puff Football Game to celebrate on Oct. 8.
- The Fairborn Library is planning a children’s birthday party from 2 to 4 p.m. on Sept. 6, including various kids’ activities and story time with the mayor.
- Throughout the year, the library will also feature “Voices of Fairborn”, an ongoing oral history project, in which residents can capture and preserve their stories and those of their families, Bates said.
Credit: Bryant Billing
Credit: Bryant Billing
‘The town that moved’
The history of Fairfield and Osborn, the two cities that merged to form Fairborn in 1950, has a history that goes back well before that time, Moore said.
After the 1913 Dayton flood that devastated the Miami Valley, the town of what’s called “old” Osborn was condemned, and residents and businesses told to evacuate. However, rather than selling their homes and starting over, residents began looking into a piece of property next to the city of Fairfield to move Osborn to - in the most literal sense.
“Fairfield tried to petition for the same property that Osborn was petitioning for,” Moore said. “So that got into an argument, and the county commissioners decided in favor of Osborn. It went all the way to the state Supreme Court, and Osborn was allowed to move.”
Thus, in 1922, the people of Osborn began the process of packing up. Over the span of two years, they moved nearly 200 houses (and at least one business) to the site next to Fairfield, neighboring the town on what is now Wright Avenue in Fairborn. The towns remained neighbors for the next 28 years.
The operation to move that many houses was a feat of engineering, Moore said. The houses had to be moved a mile and a half, which included crossing railroad tracks, which had to be done in the middle of the night.
“They had to raise the electric line of the interurban - which was an electric railroad - at midnight, and staged seven, eight, nine or ten houses, and the tractors pulled them across the tracks, because they had to have that line back down and in order by 6 a.m. the next morning for the first train to come through,” Moore said.
Though there was friction initially between residents of both towns, as time passed, people began to question the need for two separate providers of public services - and the costs associated with both. Both Osborn and Fairfield had their own police departments, school districts, firefighters, and utilities, so the decision was made in 1950 to combine both the towns - and their names - into the Fairborn we know today.
To this day, Fairborn is the only town in the United States with its name, and the only one in the world with its particular spelling (the town of Fairbourne is located in Gwynedd, Wales).
Though the merge didn’t happen until 1950, the idea to combine the two towns had been suggested decades before. Col. Edward Deeds, a well-known historical figure in the Miami Valley and founder of the Miami Conservancy District, was actually the first to suggest that Fairfield and Osborn merge in the aftermath of the Dayton flood.
“He said, ‘Why are you arguing about moving this town? Why don’t you just go ahead and combine the town and name it Fairborn?’ So the name Fairborn was created actually in 1920,” Moore said.
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