The Boone County Parks Department is celebrating 50 years in the community with a free event on Saturday.
The department regularly holds free movie nights, nature walks and outdoor events for the public, but Jackie Heyenbruch, marketing and special events coordinator, said they wanted to do something even bigger to celebrate their 50th anniversary.
On Saturday, July 30, the Boone County Parks Department will host Sparktacular, a free event with live music, food trucks, inflatables for kids, outdoor games and a fireworks finale.
Heyebruch said this event is not only to celebrate the parks department but also to highlight what Boone County has to offer.
“We have such a growing community, and in that are so many children in our area and they need outlets. We have parks for those outlets. We have playgrounds, we have walking trails and we have different types of fishing ponds,” Heyebruch said. “I mean, we just want to have everything for our community so that people have green space, and people can come out and enjoy what we have to offer.”
All of this will go down at England Idlewild Park days after the county signed a deal with the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport for 296 acres of land to expand the park. The county purchased the land for $1.18 million and plans to continue to use the majority of it to preserve green space in Boone County, according to County Administrator Jeff Earlywine.