The 2013 Orange County Music and Heritage Reunion will be celebrated on historic Congress Square in the center of Orleans, Indiana Friday and Saturday, the 7th and 8th of June. This free to the public event presents nearly 50 hours of traditional and modern acoustic music on two stages plus hours of jammin’ under the sycamore tree.

The Friday music offerings run from 6:00 to 10:00 pm. On Saturday the stages will continue to feature local and regional groups non-stop from 9:00 am to 10:00 pm. The “Remembrance of Musicians Past” will be read on Saturday as a way to remember and celebrate local musicians who filled  many hours and hearts with the joy of stories told in song.

The 2013 Music and Heritage Reunion continues to carry on the spirit and tradition of the long running Lotus Dickey Home Town Reunion.  In its inaugural 2012 event the Music and Heritage Reunion drew nearly 2,000 music lovers to the Square.

On this year’s Heritage side of the Reunion one focus is on the wonderful little hamlet of Orangeville.  Famous to geologist around the country for the “Orangeville Rise” of the Lost River, the community is renewing its own sense of pride and place by restoring the old four room school house and getting the word out that the old town is far from dead.  The other Heritage exhibit features the area that was drowned under the waters of Indiana’s second largest reservoir, Patoka Lake.  After the dam gates closed in 1978 the water rose to submerge the settlement of Newton Stewart and the homesteads of many local families who had to move to higher ground.

Extra attractions in the Reunion include regional artisans and crafters with their offerings, the HomeGrown Farmers Market on Saturday morning, and, of course, the jammer’s area under the Sycamore all the time.

Orange County and environs is so complex as to be almost mysterious.  There is a river that is Lost.  Century old hotels born anew to even greater splendor.  Caves that are wet, dry, go up, go down, go long, narrow, with doorways into cathedral rooms.  Here are Amish farms tended by beautiful Percheron horses and across the good neighbor fence a quarter million dollar John Deere turns turf into profit.  A forest is called The Hoosier and grows on a land called Karst. This is a place where  spring is green and the autumn is as colorful as the county is named – Orange.

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