Pekin’s yearlong celebration of its bicentennial really ramps up tomorrow and this weekend, with a ceremonial opening of the Pekin City Hall time capsule Thursday morning, tours of the Brotherton Museum on Friday at the former Franklin School building, and a Bicentennial Bash at Mineral Springs Park this Saturday afternoon and evening.
The time capsule event will take place at 9 a.m. Thursday, 4 July 2024, at the Pekin Municipal Building in City Council Chambers and the main lobby, where the historical relics that were buried on 1 Jan. 1977 outside the old city hall on Margaret Street will be presented to the public.
This time capsule was buried at the close of Pekin’s celebration of the U.S Bicentennial in 1976, to be opened during Pekin’s own bicentennial on the Fourth of July in 2024. The time capsule was unearthed 22 years ago when the city built the current Municipal Building, where the capsule was reinterred. It was unearthed again this year on May 31 in preparation for the July 4 opening ceremony.
The ceremony will include the reading of letters written in 1976 by the late Mayor William Waldmeier and the late Chuck Wolfe, president of the Pekin Chamber of Commerce, both of whom passed away in 2013. These letters were to be read by their successors in 2024 – Mayor Mary Burress and Amy McCoy, executive director of the Pekin Area Chamber of Commerce. Attendees will be not only get to view the contents of the 1977 time capsule, but also some of the contents of the two previous City Hall time capsules, the first dating from the 1884 construction of Pekin’s first city hall and the second from Pekin’s second city hall that was built on the site of the first city hall in 1951.
Then on Friday, the Brotherton Museum which hold a collection of Pekin historical materials in the former Franklin School building, at the foot of Broadway, will host tours from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Saturday’s Bicentennial celebrations will take place along Pavilion Drive in Mineral Springs Park from 3 to 10 p.m. Organized and sponsored by the Pekin Park Foundation, the park’s Bicentennial Bash will include a Fun on the Run inflatable area from 3 to 8 p.m., a Pavilion Porch Party featuring music by Mixtape Mayhem from 5 to 8:30 p.m. and sales of beer, seltzer, and wine at the Pavilion (last call will be at 8:15 p.m.), tethered hot air balloon rides from 6 to 8 p.m. ($15 per person), Unique Twist balloon art from 5 to 7 p.m., and an array of food trucks. The evening will conclude with a fireworks display that will begin around 9 p.m. – this will be a second round of fireworks coming close on the heels of Pekin’s annual Honor America Fourth of July fireworks show.
Pekin held comparable celebrations one hundred years ago this very week, when the community held a three-day Centennial Celebration at Mineral Springs Park at the beginning of July 1924. With Pekin now on the eve of its July 2024 Bicentennial celebrations, here at “From the History Room” we will begin today a weekly series of reminiscences of Pekin’s Centennial Celebration in which we present the extensive Pekin Daily Times news reports on the Centennial that were published in the Pekin Daily Times from Tuesday, 1 July 1924, to Friday, 4 July 1924.
Copies of these front page news articles retrieved from the Pekin Public Library’s microfilm collection are also currently displayed in the library’s Local History Room. Here below is a transcription of the Daily Times’ banner-headlined article that was printed in the Tuesday, 1 July 1924 edition of the newspaper. It is readily evident from this hundred-year-old article that, though the Centennial and Bicentennial events have many differences, people then and now enjoyed public celebrations of their community and its history.
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This detail from the front page of the Tuesday, 1 July 1924 edition of the Pekin Daily Times shows C. Hubert Ropp, Louella Carver, and Everett McKinley Dirksen, three notable graduates from Pekin Community High School who were the principals behind Pekin’s Centennial play, entitled “One Thousand Years Ago,” which was presented during the city’s Centennial Celebration in Mineral Spring’s Park on Wednesday, 2 July 1924. Ropp and Dirksen were, respectively, the president and vice-president of PCHS Class of 1913, while Carver was a member of PCHS Class of 1917. Dirksen and Carver, who both sang in the Presbyterian Church choir, began their courtship during the production of the Centennial play.
Trains Today Bear Hosts While All Highways Lead to Pekin
CITY’S WELCOME IS OUT
By ROLAND RUST
This is the eve of Pekin’s Centennial celebration.
Tomorrow the curtain will be drawn aside and the first part of a monster three-day program, commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of the city, will begin in full sway. Never before in Pekin’s history has the populace awaited with more eagerness an event – and tomorrow their expectancy will be fulfilled.
Every train today brought visitors from all parts of the state. All roads tomorrow will lead to Pekin and hundreds of motor parties from the surrounding country will pour into the city through every gateway.
Decoration of Windows.
Merchants’ windows were being decorated for the display of relics and Court street tomorrow will be a gallery of historical lore seldom equaled in any museum.
Visitors will register at the courthouse where the first floor corridors will resemble a hotel lobby. At 10 o’clock the first Centennial music will come from the courthouse steps when the Pekin Municipal band plays a concert.
At the same time novelty races will be run off on the north side of the courthouse and from then on the Centennial will proceed, increasing in hilarity and variety until the curtain is rung down with the fireworks display on the night of the Fourth.
Final plans for the festivities were being completed today at Association of Commerce headquarters by L. D’Ooge, Secretary, and Walton Conover, Centennial Executive chairman, and other committee heads.
In Business District.
Block after block in the business district today was a flutter with the national and carnival colors. Retail merchants adhered to a uniform scheme of decoration and the effect was apparent with thousands of flags and thousands of yards of bunting mingling with carnival hues of yellow, purple and orange.
Following the races and the band concert downtown tomorrow morning the scene of festivities will shift to the park when the County ministers and their families and the Old Settlers will stage a reunion and a picnic. A feature of the program will be the Old Fiddlers’ contest for which many expert musicians have registered.
At 5:30 o’clock Chief White Eagle and his Indians will have the center of the Centennial stage with the establishing of an Indian village and trading post at the park. The Chief will lecture and his official family will reproduce redskin dances and pantomimes.
Tomorrow’s program will be climaxed with the historic play, “One Thousand Years Ago” staged entirely by local talent with a cast of 100 characters, beautiful lighting effects and scenery. The play will be staged in the park ravine, a natural amphitheatre in which 5,000 seats are arranged.
Following is the program of the day outlined by the Centennial Executive committee:
10:00 a.m. – North side of the Court House, Kiddy Car race, children six years and under.
10:30 a.m. – Kiddy car race, for adults.
11:00 a.m. – Boys tug-o-war.
At noon, the County Ministers and their families, assisted by church men of the city, are to have a picnic at the park.
During the early part of the afternoon, the Recreation committee will stage contests at the park, as follows:
1:00 p.m. – Married Ladies foot race.
1:30 p.m. – Married Men foot race.
2:00 p.m. – Girls, 16 years and under, foot race.
2:30 p.m. – Boys, 16 years and under, foot race.
2:45 p.m. – Ladies ball throwing, 18 years and over.
3:00 p.m. – North short of the lagoon, boys tub race.
3:30 p.m. – Front of grand stand, ladies sawing contest.
3:45 p.m. – Old Fiddlers contest.
4:00 p.m. – Same place, boys pie eating contest.
5:00 p.m. – Prizes will be awarded to the winners of the day’s contests.
There will also be a prize given to the oldest lady and oldest man registering at the Centennial headquarters.
5:30 p.m. – Indians will stage a pantomime with Indian dances in the Indian village at the park.
In the early twilight, the new Park Fountain is to be illuminated.
8:00 – Chinese play, “One Thousand Years Ago,” at Mineral Springs park.
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Next week we will present the Pekin Daily Times reports from Wednesday, 2 July 1924, the first day of the Pekin Centennial Celebration.
Local History Program Coordinator at the Pekin Public Library. I oversee the library's local history room collection and write a weekly local history column/blog.
