In 2014, a shop owner named Joyce Leach set up an outdoor antique sale outside The Old Store on Piedmont's original townsite. She called it Junklahoma. It fit comfortably in one lot. Nobody needed a map to find it.
Thirteen years later, that same idea needs the church parking lot, a downtown storefront, and space donated by the Piedmont Historical Society just to hold all the vendors who show up. The parade still runs the same short route it always has. The town around it does not fit the way it used to.
That is the story worth telling about this year's Piedmont Founders Day, set for Saturday, September 12, 2026, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Not that it exists. Everyone already knows it exists. The story is what it takes to run a 36-year-old small-town festival in a town that has added a third of its population since the last census.
A Town Built on a Quarter Section, Celebrating Its 36th Year
Piedmont's founding story is smaller than most people assume. James Dean homesteaded the land during the Unassigned Lands run of April 22, 1889. After Dean died in 1899, the property passed to Dr. E.H. Long, who in 1903 set aside a single quarter section for a townsite. That quarter section is more or less the downtown residents still walk through today: Jackson Avenue, Monroe Avenue, the blocks around the Piedmont Historical Society museum.
The city didn't start celebrating that founding with an organized festival until 1991. This year marks the 36th annual Founders Day, which means the event has now been running for more years than the gap between Dean's original claim and Long's decision to plat a town at all. It has outlasted most of the businesses that opened alongside it.
What hasn't stayed constant is the crowd showing up to celebrate.
What's Actually Scheduled This Year
The mechanics of the day haven't changed much in structure, even as the scale around them has.
| Event | Format | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Makin' Tracks 5K | Timed run, kicks off the morning | Starts near First Baptist Church, 15 Jackson Ave NW |
| Parade | Family-friendly procession through downtown | Downtown Piedmont route |
| Vendor market | Food, craft, and antique booths, more than 150 vendors | First Baptist Church lot and surrounding downtown blocks |
| Junklahoma | Vintage, antique, and boutique sale presented by The Old Store | The Old Store and adjacent lots |
| Children's activities | Pony rides, wall climbing, inflatables, face painting | Scattered across the festival footprint |
The Piedmont Founders Day organizers describe the day as parade, shopping, inflatables, and games, and that undersells how much ground it now covers. A festival that once meant a morning at one church lot now asks attendees to plan a route between three or four separate clusters of activity, same as you would at a much larger regional event.
Expect the usual food lineup that's defined Founders Day for years: cinnamon rolls, homemade desserts, barbecue, hot dogs, Indian tacos, and Frito chili pie. Past years have also included a talent show, an art show, and a pie and quilt raffle, the kind of programming that tells you this started as a genuinely small-town civic event and has simply had more people show up to it every year since.
The Junk Sale That Outgrew Downtown
Junklahoma is the clearest evidence of how much this event has stretched. By its 10th anniversary in 2023, the antique and vintage sale that started as one storefront's side project had grown past 200 vendors, according to coverage in the Piedmont-Surrey Gazette. Organizer Jared Stewart told the paper that year that the event had spread into the Historical Society's annex property at 2nd Street and Jackson because the original footprint had filled up. The Piedmont First Baptist Church had already offered its own space for the same reason.
That expansion wasn't a one-time fix. It became how the event operates now. Junklahoma and the broader Founders Day celebration run across multiple properties because no single lot in downtown Piedmont has ever been sized for the version of this festival that exists today.
This year is Junklahoma's 13th, and the current Founders Day site lists the whole event, parade, market, antique sale, and all, at more than 150 local and area vendors. Whether that reflects a shift in how vendors are counted or simply a different mix of booths in a given year, the pattern underneath it hasn't moved: a festival that started in one parking lot now needs several, and it has needed several for at least three years running.
Past editions have leaned on that growth in specific ways. The Piedmont FFA has taken part alongside hometown games like sack races and tug-of-war. Piedmont High School's drama department has portrayed figures from the town's own history, Harold Collett, a former school superintendent, among them, turning a shopping day into something closer to a living history exhibit for a town that still remembers most of its own names.
Why the Crowd Looks Different Than It Used To
Here's the number that explains why this festival keeps needing more room. Piedmont's population sat at 7,490 at the 2020 census. Current population estimates put the city at roughly 9,829 residents in 2026, a jump of just over 31 percent in six years, according to current population tracking.
Run that math against the festival. Roughly one in four people walking through downtown Piedmont on September 12 will have moved to town since the last census. A meaningful share of this year's Founders Day crowd has never seen a version of the event that actually fit inside one parking lot. To them, the sprawl across First Baptist Church, The Old Store, and the Historical Society annex isn't an adaptation. It's just what Founders Day is.
For residents who've been here longer, that contrast is worth sitting with for a minute while you're standing in line for an Indian taco. The festival didn't get bigger because organizers decided to scale it up. It got bigger because the town around it did, one new subdivision and one new family at a time, and the event simply kept absorbing the difference.
That's usually how you can tell a small town is genuinely growing rather than just getting busier for a weekend. The permanent fixtures, the parade route, the antique sale, the pony rides, stay exactly the same size they've always been. It's the crowd around them that keeps needing more room.
Worth the Trip Downtown
If you live in Piedmont, you don't need a reason to go to Founders Day. You'll probably see three neighbors before you find parking. But it's worth walking the full footprint this year, church lot to Old Store to Historical Society annex, and noticing how much ground a 36-year-old parade now covers. That's not nostalgia. That's just what a town growing this fast looks like on a Saturday morning.
If you're curious about what else is changing in Piedmont, from new construction to how the town's growth is reshaping its neighborhoods, Brandon Jackson at OKC Real Estate Group keeps a close eye on it year-round. Reach out anytime you want a straight answer about what's actually happening here, no pressure, just someone who pays attention to the same town you do.
