ERIE, Ill. — It's been a long time coming for a community celebration in Eerie, Illinois, honoring the town's 150th birthday.
Community and Economic Development Director Katelin Bridgman said they'd been planning the celebration since she moved to the village in September.
"Erie is incredibly close-knit very community oriented. Everybody knows everybody. And that's honestly what I love so much about it. I've never felt so welcomed anywhere in my life. Within the first few weeks of me getting here, I felt like I knew half of the residents because it's such a small community. "
Over 400 alumni have RSVP'd for the school reunion.
"People are coming from classes going all the way back to 1943. So we're super excited to welcome people from really all over the US that grew up in Erie, welcome them back to into Erie for the grand celebration that we have on Saturday. So we're going to be gathering at the high school and we're going to have a band we have food trucks that are coming tonight and tomorrow."
The village has a population smaller than 1,400 and it spans just about a mile-and-half of land. Still, it has a rich history. That's why the village created a pop-up museum to highlight the century and a half of milestones.
"A lot of times when you think of young people, they don't understand the strife and the turmoil that families went to the travel across the United States to settle in the Midwest and the prairies. And like, one of our founders, Louis Crandall, he lost a child on the river when they were coming down river to settle in theory, the first settler that came to Erie was frightened off by Native Americans," said Carla Jaquet, a local historian.
The village also restored its downtown fountain, which was created in 1908.
"We joke that Erie is so small, we don't have a downtown square, we have a downtown triangle. And one of our goals of the Margaret Park redesign project was to be able to see all areas of the triangle before we had two very large overgrown trees that were obstructing traffic and obstructing the view," Bridgman said.
Events start at 11 AM on Saturday, August 13th. The events go all day and include live music.