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1974 — present
Where the whole city eats at once: Fort Wayne's public table is its festivals, and three of them are food records in themselves. The Johnny Appleseed Festival, created in 1974 for the bicentennial of John Chapman's birth, is governed by food rules no other city festival imposes: vendors are invitation-only, cooking must be done over open wood or coal fires — no propane — in 1800s dress, and everything sold must have been available in Appleseed's century. The result is a two-day pioneer menu eaten by more than 200,000 visitors: ham and beans with stone-ground cornbread, chicken and dumplings, apple dumplings, caramel apples, fresh cider, buffalo burgers and fry bread, much of it cooked by nonprofit church and school groups. Germanfest began in 1981, founded to unite the city's German clubs — the Männerchor of 1869 the oldest — and moved to Headwaters Park in 1994; its table is bratwurst and currywurst, sauerkraut, schnitzel and kuchen, with the sister-city delegation from Gera, Germany, at the tables since 1992. Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church — founded in Fort Wayne in 1960 — staged its first Greek Festival in 1981 by the festival's own count (the forty-sixth annual festival was held in June 2026): four days at Headwaters Park of gyros, souvlaki, roasted lamb shank, pastitsio, moussaka and spanakopita, and a pastry booth — baklava, kataifi, karidopita, koulourakia, loukoumades in honey — all of it cooked by the parishioners, as it was through the pandemic years, when the festival ran as a drive-thru rather than not at all.
Sources:
- Johnny Appleseed Festival, general vendor information and rules (johnnyappleseedfest.com) — the 1974 creation, the open-fire and period rules, the first one-day festival and the present 200,000-visitor scale.
- Visit Fort Wayne, "History Abounds at Johnny Appleseed Festival" — the period menu as the festival serves it.
- Whatzup, "Celebrating Gemütlichkeit" (2018) — Germanfest's 1981 founding, the German clubs, the 1994 Headwaters move, the Gera sister-city tie of 1992, the festival menu.
- Fort Wayne Greek Festival (fortwaynegreekfest.org) and Whatzup (2022, 2023) — the 46th annual festival of 2026, Holy Trinity's 1960 founding, the parishioner-cooked menu, the pandemic drive-thru years.
- Events Calendar and Communities — the festivals as events and the communities as peoples, cross-referenced and not retold here.