FoundersFest celebrates the early days of Downers Grove

BY VALERIE HARDY 

Downers Grove returns to its roots during the annual FoundersFest celebration. Commemorating the village’s opening chapter and featuring its founding fathers and mothers, the weeklong series of events is a time-honored tradition for residents and merchants each spring.

The 2026 FoundersFest will open on April 25 with the Pine Hollow Golf Tournament at the historic Belmont Golf Club. It will also feature a “Night at the Tivoli” on

Downers Grove Historical Society Director Amy Gassen at A Night at The Tivoli in 2025.

April 29, including the premiere of a new documentary by award-winning local filmmaker Jim Toth. This year’s FoundersFest will culminate on May 2 with various events, including a free Country in the Park afternoon on the grounds of the Downers Grove Museum and the annual Founder of the Year (FOTY) Ceremony at the Main Street Cemetery.

Each year, the FOTY ceremony honors one of Downers Grove’s earliest settlers. In 2014, Pierce Downer, fittingly, became the first FOTY. The 2026 FOTY recognition will be bestowed upon Nathan Alonzo Belden, the village’s first blacksmith.

FoundersFest has been running in its current format for over a decade, bringing Downers Grove’s past into the present. However, the concept of a founders-focused event in town dates back half a century. It reportedly started in the 1970s, when the Downers Grove Downtown Retail Council hosted Founder’s Day each spring.

However, as local leadership changed, Founder’s Day receded and resumed. After years on pause, Founder’s Day’s first major resurgence was in the 1990s, with a one-day celebration typically running from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. the first Saturday in May. It showcased living local history presentations, Civil War re-enactments, and entertainment like strolling barbershop quartets. Downtown Downers Grove would teem with the likeness of local personalities of the 1860s dressed in period-appropriate apparel. Beyond local historical figures, even an Abraham Lincoln impersonator delivering the Gettysburg Address could be found making an appearance.

Downtown businesses also participated, offering Founder’s Day discounts and presenting historic displays in their storefront windows. The Downers Grove Downtown Retail Council partnered with the Downers Grove Historical Society, offering narrated historical walking tours and carriage rides as part of these Founder’s Day celebrations.

At Country in the Park, families can visit with farm animals and play 1850’s pioneer-era games.

Starting in 1997, Founder’s Day became increasingly family-friendly. Wagon rides, a petting zoo, tours of the Downers Grove Museum, storytelling, and other children’s programming were added. By the new millennium, Founder’s Day – now hosted by the Downers Grove Downtown Management Corporation – was promoted as equal parts educational experience and family fun.

However, from 2003-2013, Downers Grove pressed pause on Founder’s Day. It was erased from the village’s annual calendar but not from the collective memory of the community. Then, in 2014 – in part inspired by Downers Grove historians Bruce Swanson and Lois Sterba’s call for a revival of Founder’s Day – the expanded FoundersFest of today commenced.

Thank you to Downers Grove Historical Society Board members Andi Kinsella, Bruce Swanson, Lois Sterba, Marty Acks, and Liz Chalberg, whose research and documentation have preserved the evolution of the community’s founders-focused celebrations. Visit dghistory.org for more information on FoundersFest.

2026 Founder of the Year

Meet Nathan Alonzo Belden.  Born in New York in 1819, Belden was one of nine children. He learned the blacksmith trade from his father before marrying Fannie Randall when he was 25 years old. In 1844, the newlyweds journeyed to Illinois, where Belden had friends. They happened to stop in Downers Grove en route to their original destination, and Belden was approached by the region’s namesake settler, Pierce Downer, to repair a horseshoe. Recognizing the need for a blacksmith in the growing settlement, Belden decided to remain in Downers Grove, building a house on Maple Avenue and helping construct a Methodist church nearby. He and Fannie raised three children, born between 1844-1848, in the community.

Belden died in 1864 and was buried in the Main Street Cemetery, just blocks from the home and church he helped build. However, his legacy in the community lived on through his children, grandchildren, and subsequent generations. Belden’s grandson, Guy Bush, became president of the Downers Grove Village Board in 1897 before serving six terms in the Illinois State Legislature. Bush’s daughter, Lucile (1898-1999), became an educator, worked at the famed Hull House in Chicago, helped found the American Association of University Women, and was invited to the White House by President Eisenhower for a national conference on youth.