Committee begins Walnut Creek bicentennial prep

Before any big function takes place, there is a ton of groundwork that must take place, and in preparation for celebrating its bicentennial anniversary, the local community of Walnut Creek is putting their collective heads together in preparation for creating something memorable and sensational.

That the bicentennial isn’t until 2027 may seem far away, but the group understands that there is a lot of work that needs to take place in preparation, thus, they are giving themselves plenty of time to make sure everything is in place.

On Tuesday, April 8, close to 20 local individuals from the community gathered in the conference room at Carlisle Inn to hash out some initial details. The meeting of the minds marked the third time the group had gotten together, and this meeting came with one major stipulation — finding a chairman to guide the committee moving forward.

Leon Hershberger, who spearheaded the exploratory committee meeting, said getting like-minded people together to figure out the minute details that will eventually lead to success can never begin soon enough.

“We as a Walnut Creek Community Association, along with the German Culture Museum, have talked about this for four or five months already,” Hershberger said. “At a certain point, we figured out that we needed to have some brainstorming sessions to get things in motion.”

The exploratory committee consists of people from the two entities, and the idea was to allow everyone to express ideas, hammer out some of the details and share thoughts on things that they believe can make the bicentennial celebration fun and memorable for everyone.

“We’re a year-and-a-half away, which may seem like a long time, but it will be here before you know it, and we need to get structure in place,” Hershberger said. “We have a lot of energy in this room, a lot of ideas about what we want to accomplish, but we recognize we need to put that structure in place.”

The main focus was on finding the leadership team to helm the process, and the committee rolled out several names, most of whom were present at the meeting.

Prior to cementing a chairman, the committee agreed that there was a need to create a job description of the role, something that Patrick Miller said he would create.

The committee then went about creating some ideas that needed to be present in the job description.

Among the important factors were bringing in someone who had a passion for the community, knew the history of Walnut Creek Township and had the time necessary to devote to creating a team around them who could move forward on necessary details in building subcommittees.

The idea that eventually developed through the exploratory committee was that they wanted the chair to have the liberty to tab his or her own team.

Another key topic was the idea of covering the past 200 years of history.

John Hochstetler said that while there is already a large book that thoroughly covers Walnut Creek’s first 150 years, a book created in honor of the sesquicentennial celebration in 1976, the past decades need to be fleshed out and explored.

“We really don’t have anything that goes back and covers the past 50 years of our history, and we really need to explore the last 50 years,” Hochstetler said.

The discussion also centered around creating a variety of possible options for entertainment, including fireworks, a grand parade that included antique tractors and vintage automobiles, a hot air balloon launch and the possible return of the 40-hitch horse team that was present at the sesquicentennial, among the many possibilities that were brought up.

Kermit Miller also recommended that they create some community events several days leading up to the main event that would inspire locals to venture into Walnut Creek.

Vicki VanNatta also said it was important to keep the Amish community involved and connected in the proceedings.

Finally, the group discussed the idea of creating a new historical marker for Walnut Creek.

With a rich and valued history that includes a wide variety of people, businesses and community events over the past two centuries, from White Jonas to Troyer’s Trail Bologna, the committee hopes to create an event that will capture the faith, community unity and history of Walnut Creek Township that will both tell a story and entertain.