Stone Ridge's new signs feature fieldstone and Indiana limestone. (Photo by Allen Stroud)

In 2005, remnants of Hurricane Katrina destroyed both entrance signs. Residents have built new signs featuring stacked Tennessee Valley fieldstone with an engraved, premium Indiana Limestone face.

To raise $15,000 for the new signs, about half of Stone Ridge’s residents donated during door-to-door canvassing or to a Redstone Federal Credit Union account.

The Stone Ridge 35th-Anniversary Celebration will be held Jan. 19 at 11:30 a.m. Madison Mayor Troy Trulock and former Mayor Burwell ‘Sonny’ Wilbanks, who was in office during the neighborhood’s construction, will attend.

Kroger of Madison will supply refreshments at Discovery Middle School’s stadium lot. Current residents, numbering about 600, and former homeowners have been invited, along with beautification and public works employees.

Madison Chamber of Commerce will conduct a ribbon cutting for the signs.

Replacing the signs “revitalized our sense of ‘community,'” committee president and celebration organizer Allen Stroud said. The committee includes Stroud, Katherine Hinson, Barbara Fisk, Virgil Burrer, Ronica Ondocsin, Don Shook, Brenda Anding, Bobby Milam, Gerry Flanagan, Billy Campbell, Steve Twigg and Gene Wrobel.

Most of Stone Ridge’s 236 homes are typical 1980’s ranchers at 2,000-plus square feet, often with stonework and cedar siding. Hunter & Mitchell Homes built numerous houses as ‘spec houses.’ “However, many are customized homes, where the owners sub-contracted the projects. There’s a nice mixture,” Stroud said.

His parents, Wes Stroud and Jan Stroud, moved to Stone Ridge for its convenience for his job as agri-science program head at (then) Bob Jones High School. “Mom believed the ‘new’ Madison Square Mall would create growth in north Madison,” Allen Stroud said.

“Stone Ridge was a very popular neighborhood for new families in the 1980s. They raised their children and decided to retire here,” Stroud said. “We’ve always prided ourselves over the years as having the largest lots in Madison … a big selling point to potential homebuyers in the early days and still is.”