The signs above Park Avenue and South Second Street read “Thanks for coming, see you next year.”

With Rally on the River 2006 officially history, organizers and city officials are mulling effects of this year’s event and thinking ahead already to next year.

“I think things went well,” Friends of Ironton member Jodi Rowe-Collins said. “Our goal was to bring people into the community and let them spend their money and we did that. The vendors were satisfied and have asked to come back. If they want to come back it means they made some money. I think this year was very successful.”

She pointed out that pulling off the event took a lot of pairs of hands, some holding generous donations, for which she and other FOI members are very thankful.

“We had a bunch of good volunteers and a bunch of good sponsors and just good people in the community that added to this,” Rowe-Collins said.

What seemed to be biggest draw?

“I think probably it was the FMX motorcycle stunt team,” she said. “Big kids, little kids, everyone likes to see people doing stunts and these people were good with the kids, good with the crowd. They stuck around afterwards and signed photographs and signed shirts. I think that was probably our main draw.”

An estimated crowd of 16,000-17,000 flowed into the area for the four-day event, according to Friends of Ironton President Rick Jansen.

From the police perspective, the weekend was uneventful.

“I had no reports of anything, everything seems to have gone well,” Ironton Police Chief Jim Carey said. “We had a few DUI’s and that kind of stuff but it seems to have gone without incident as far as I know.”

As for next year, Rowe-Collins said FOI will likely critique this year’ s event and then tweak it for next summer. However, the focus will now shift to the first-ever FOI-sponsored Octoberfest in Ironton that is scheduled for Sept. 23.