True locals show their colors with indifference to — sometimes even in ignorance of — the treasures that bless the place in which they live. Attractions that visitors travel from afar to enjoy are overlooked. On this principle, the Keeler Tavern might a good test of true Ridgefielders. Been there lately? Ever? Know who Cass Gilbert was? How about Anna Marie Resseguie? Benjamin Hoyt?
With some 25,000 Ridgefielders, there are probably a few who haven’t visited the Keeler Tavern Museum in years or — say it ain’t so — ever. This Saturday is a great opportunity to correct that. For those who do know, visit and appreciate the Tavern, it’s a time to celebrate the Main Street landmark.
The Keeler Tavern is marking its 300th anniversary the old-fashioned way: with a party! Saturday from noon to 4 the Tavern and its grounds will be alive with events, entertainments, displays and demonstrations by period craft workers, old time kids’ games to be played, music, pony rides, face-painting. Cool old stuff on hand will include classic cars and vintage bicycles, typewriters and tools. There’ll even be a birthday cake with 300 candles.
The party’s free and all are welcome, but guided tours of the 300-year-old building with its period furnishings and collection of artifacts will be $5. Costumed re-enactors will portray eight of the people who have lived in the Tavern over a 300-year history that took it from town proprietor’s lot to patriot gathering spot to wayside coach stop to architect’s country home to preservationists’ project and local history museum.
For the more ambitious, a fund-raiser Saturday is the Ride Into Ridgefield History bicycle tour featuring town historical sites and houses of famous Ridgefielders. Starting at 9 Saturday from 22 Catoonah Street, near the firehouse, it will be offered in three lengths and costs $15 a person, or $25 per family, with funds benefiting the Keeler Tavern Museum and the Ridgefield Historical Society.
The Keeler Tavern is more than a quaint, gambrel-roofed building that looks out on Main Street near the fountain. Check out what the museum has going for it. There’s a lot — including the non-birthday gift left embedded in its beams by British troops retreating from a torched Danbury to their ships waiting off the beach of what is now Westport. The locally famous artifact that generations of school kids have reached for and touched, gives The Tavern its nickname, “the Cannonball House.”