October 3-5, 2025 Johnny Appleseed Festival

This is our biggest event of the year!

 As fall arrives this is the last chance to revive all of your senses, to create a mental picture that will carry you through the winter.  In addition to our regular activities, we'll also be making apple cider, sorghum molasses, kettle corn and more.

Enter through the Rotary Office Building.  A $30 Family Membership to the Defiance County Historical Society gets the whole family in for free!  Otherwise, pay $5 ages 13 and over for the day.  Family memberships bought at the Johnny Appleseed will be good for all 2023 Village sponsored events! WOW!  Village maps are available to guide you through the weekend's events.  This is a good time to turn on your Wi-Fi and take full advantage of modern technology.  Thanks to Metalink, the entire village is bubbled with public Wi-Fi so you can google and interact with our displays to your heart's content!  Just enter your first name and e-mail to logon. 

As you walk through the pioneer village, you will notice the Train Depot.   You can pass through the depot, purchase a $2 ticket at the window and wait on the platform for the next train!  The conductor will punch your ticket and tour you around the village grounds.  Wave as you pass by!

After the train you may smell the Kettle Corn!  Buy a bag or two to enjoy or take home for a bedtime snack.

You may be hungry by now and want to fill up with a bowl of soup or hot sandwich at the Concession stand located in the Big Red Barn!  Eat inside or out at the shelter near the Rotary Office.  

If you time it right, you can take your dessert and catch a performance by Johnny Appleseed.  He will be hanging out back by the Kinner Log Home.  Show times are posted at his tent. 

Now's the time to keep touring and walk off all that good food!  You may have already visited the front of the Village:  the Sherry Schoolhouse, Doc Cameron's Office, the Mark Center Post Office, the Minsel Barbershop, and the Ayersville Telephone Office.  Did you pick up a souvenir at the General Store?  Outside the store, the kids can also grind corn and for a small donation, the resulting corn meal can be taken home.

The back of the Village can't be missed!  To the far south end we have two gems.  These two structures were built during the Great Depression to house CCC workers.  They later housed POW's (mostly German) in the area.  They have been moved to the Village and house our Military collection and our Natural Science collection.   Don't miss the sawmill and the Hale Logging Shanty, the woodshop, the still and the two story Kinner Log Home. 

Making your way back up to toward the front you can see demonstrators making Sorghum Molasses and Apple Cider!  All are available to take home with a suggested donation.  The very front of the Village, to the south, houses our Farm Exhibits, the Diehl Brewery's Corliss Engine, and the model railroad museum.  Your smart phone and the Metalink sponsored Wi-Fi are particularly handy in these areas!

Are you thoroughly exhausted yet!?  Stop by the concession stand and take home dinner!  Pick up your mums and pumpkins!  Say goodbye to the Village until the Spring when the fun starts all over again!  We hope you had a historic day!

Saturday 9am - ?         Sunday 10am - 5pm

Admission $5.  Kids 12 and under free with an adult.  Members are free.