Pekin preparing to celebrate its Bicentennial Year 2024

Official logo of Pekin Bicentennial 2024, approved by the Pekin Bicentennial Celebration Committee. A year of community celebrations is being planned.

The New Year A.D. 2024 promises to be a memorable one for Pekin, with celebrations and special activities being planned throughout the year to mark our community’s Bicentennial.

One hundred years ago, Pekin put on a multi-day festival and grand parade to celebrate its centennial. That and much more is in the works for Pekin’s bicentennial.

The first formal event being a “State of the City” program set for next month at noon, 19 Jan. 2024, at the Pekin Moose Lodge, when Pekin Mayor Mary Burress will deliver her first State of the City address.

The date of this event is chosen for its special significance in Pekin’s early history.

Pekin has traditionally counted the years of its history from the year 1824, when a white settler from Urbana, Ohio, named Jonathan Tharp (1794-1844) arrived at the future site of Pekin, building his cabin at a location that is now occupied by the former Franklin School building at the foot of Broadway. Pekin grew from that seed planted by Tharp.

Tharp was joined the following year by family members and other settlers, and by 1829 the nascent pioneer community set to work surveying and platting the lots and streets of a new “Town Site.” The settlers officially voted on a name for their town on 19 Jan. 1830, and chose the name “Pekin,” evidently in honor of Peking (Beijing), China. Seven years after that, on 19 Jan. 1837, the Illinois General Assembly formalized the incorporation of Pekin as a Town under Illinois law. Hence the decision to inaugurate Pekin’s Bicentennial year on Jan. 19.

The Pekin Bicentennial Celebration Committee, co-chaired by Gary Gillis and Terri Gambetti, first convened on Thursday, 12 Jan. 2023, and since then its members, representing various civic organizations, community groups, and municipal bodies, has been meeting each second Thursday of the month to coordinate plans for Pekin’s Bicentennial. Represented organizations include the Pekin Area Chamber of Commerce, the Dirksen Congressional Center, Pekin Main Street, Pekin Public School District 108, Pekin High School District 303, the Pekin Park District, the Pekin Civic Chorus, Artistic Community Theatre of Pekin, Lakeside Cemetery Association, the Tazewell County Genealogical & Historical Society, the Pekin Public Library, and others.

A vintage postcard features a hand-colored photograph by W. Blenkiron from the early 1900s, showing the Upper 300 block of Court Street opposite the Tazewell County Courthouse. Though the facades and other aspects of the buildings have changed since then, all of the buildings shown here still stand today.

Just as Pekin’s Centennial celebration was a multi-day fair in early July 1924, so the primary Bicentennial community event is being planned for early July 2024, with Pekin Bicentennial fireworks on July 6 in addition to the annual Independence Day fireworks on July 4. The Marigold Festival in September will also have a Bicentennial theme, and last summer’s downtown Community Picnic will return in June, with a community photograph being planned for June 15. Pekin’s schools are also planning to tailor their social studies lessons to Pekin’s history in the fall of 2024. The Pekin Civic Chorus will have auditions at 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 7, at Pekin Community High School, for the Pekin Civic Bicentennial Chorus, which will present its “Singing With the Stars” program from May 30 to June 2.

Other events being planned include Pekin history geocaching to begin in April, and a Cemetery History Walk at Lakeside Mausoleum and Cemetery on Sunday, Oct. 27, from 2-5 p.m., featuring local high school speech and theater students portraying past figures of Pekin’s history who lie at rest in the mausoleum.

Also in the works for 2024’s celebrations are new welcome signs, and a contest for the redesign of the city’s flag. A grand banner reminiscent of Pekin’s 1924 Centennial banner is also to be designed, to be hung across downtown Court Street just as the 1924 banner was.

The Pekin Centennial banner is suspended at the intersection of Court and Capitol streets in this photograph that looks westward down the Lower 300 block of Court Street. A similar downtown banner is planned for Pekin’s Bicentennial celebrations throughout 2024. The vista shown in this photo looks drastically different today. At the left is seen the Schipper & Block Building, which had been built in Dec. 1922 to replaced the previous Schipper’s store that had been destroyed by fire. The Tazewell County Board is now preparing to tear down the vacant former Schipper & Block Building.

A scene taken just before the start of Pekin’s Centennial Parade in early July 1924. Next July 5-7, 2024, Mineral Springs Park will host Pekin’s main Bicentennial celebration, but special events and celebrations are being planned throughout the year, beginning next month on Jan. 19.

The Committee wishes not only to spotlight and celebrate Pekin’s 200-year history, but also is thinking of ways to encourage and enable Pekin’s residents to contribute their own stories and memories of their lives and their family’s experiences growing up in Pekin.

The official internet homepage of Pekin’s Bicentennial is now being prepared, and is expected to go live this coming Tuesday, Jan. 2. When it is ready, the website will be the go-to place for news about Bicentennial events, along with information on Pekin’s 200 years of history. The Pekin Bicentennial homepage will be accessible online at Pekin200.com and PekinBicentennial.com.

Here at the Pekin Public Library’s “From the History Room” blog, the focus each week will be Pekin’s Bicentennial, with articles featuring significant and interesting events and notable people from Pekin’s past.

As it happens, next week is an important anniversary of one of the great tragedies of Pekin’s history: the 100th anniversary of the Corn Products Refinery explosion, which occurred 3 Jan. 1924, killing 42 and injuring 100. That will be the subject of next week’s “From the History Room” article.