HARRISON — For 20 years, Scribner’s Mill Preservation Inc. has relied on the generosity of local businesses to help put on its Back to the Past celebration.

For the 21st annual event Saturday, Aug. 4, organizers are doing something different than simply placing ads in their program booklet. They’re creating hand-painted barn board signs, designed to evoke the era when barn board advertising graced the sides of barns all across America.

“We’ve been around for as long as the mill has, so we thought it was only right that we participate” in supporting the educational mission of the historic sawmill and homestead on the Crooked River, Erin Plummer, spokeswoman for Hancock Lumber Co., said.

The barn boards will be seen by visitors to Back to the Past, and they’ll stay up for one year, to be seen by summer and fall open house visitors and anyone traveling on Scribner’s Mill Road. Response from the business community has been positive, once they realized how much value they would receive for donations for various size signs.

The organization’s nonprofit board hopes the program will grow each year, and existing sponsors renew their signs and new sponsors come on “board.” The signs, made of weathered boards and professionally stenciled, are being hung on the side of the Long Shed, where lumber was once stored after being sawed from logs in the mill.

Scribner’s Mill manufactured barrel staves, shingles, clapboards and apple boxes for industry from 1847 to 1962, and is the only sash sawmill remaining in North America that remains on its original site and still has much of its original equipment.

The mill’s equipment will be operating and open for tours at Back to the Past, and there will also be oxen demonstrations, homestead tours, children’s activities and a pig/turkey roast.

Admission is $6 adults, free to children 12 and younger. For directions or more information, call 583-4289 or 513-7337.