THE FOURTH OF JULY is always a festive day, but this year Emporia is pulling out all the stops. After all, it is not every year that a city can celebrate a century and a half of community life.
The summer celebration (there was one in February, too, on the anniversary of the town’s founding) will begin at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday with a concert in Albert Taylor Hall. Kelley Hunt, blues singer and rocker from Emporia, will perform and another former Emporian, Callie Agler Chambliss, will be the opening act. Foot stomping and hand clapping will be permitted.
Wednesday’s events will include a street festival from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Mechanic Street north of Sixth Avenue. There will be food, entertainment and a cake walk.
At 10 a.m., the sesquicentennial parade will roll up Commercial Street from Fourth Avenue, with floats, bands and flags.
After the street festival, there’ll be plenty of time to grill some hamburgers and hot dogs and stretch out in the shade and take a nap. Emporians will need their rest before the fireworks display starts at 9:30 p.m. at the Lyon County Fairgrounds.
In January 1907, William Allen White wrote:
Fifty years ago the 17th of next month, the town site of Emporia was located. The locating party drove down from Lawrence. The name of the town was taken from the Greek and the town has been reasonably cold and classic ever since. But nevertheless, for a matron of 50, isn’t Emporia about as handsome an old girl as you ever knew?
Well, bathed by the weeks of rain and clothed in clouds of summer green, she looks just fine at 150, too.
Come out and join her party.