Pickerington’s bicentennial year has already been graced with a kickoff event, a time capsule
opening, a tea party and a pool party, but the best – and biggest – is yet to come.
Labor Day weekend – Sept. 5-7 – will mark the city’s 200th birthday with a sizable homecoming celebration at Victory Park.
What sets this year’s event apart from the typical homecoming weekend?
“More entertainment, more games, more food,” says Rebecca Medinger, director of parks and recreation for the city. “We’re hoping that this event will draw attention to homecoming weekend and bring more people down to the Lions Club event in the years to come.”
The Pickerington Lions Club holds a fish fry and parade each Labor Day weekend.
At the homecoming celebration, there will be more than a dozen food vendors; games for all
ages, including laser tag, inflatables and a zip line; live music; fireworks; an amateur boxing showcase; opportunities to explore the Pickerington-Violet Township Historical Society’s museum; and a Vintage Square area reminiscent of the city circa 1815.
There will also be the traditional parade, which will include at least six 28-foot floats made specifically for this year’s event, along with hundreds of participants.
Pickerington celebrated its 150th anniversary in 1965 and its transition from village to city in 1990, but the bicentennial event will be its biggest yet, showing just how much the city has evolved over the past 200 years. Thinking back to the original founders of Pickerington and imagining their reaction to what it has become, Peggy Portier, president of the Historical Society, says they wouldn’t recognize it.
On September 15, 1815, Abraham Pickering founded the town of Jacksonville. Twelve years
later, it was officially renamed Pickerington. The town began with plots of land reserved for educational purposes, a cemetery and a church.
“The community has revolved around church, school and agriculture from the beginning,” says Portier.
It started off small, but railroads put the city on the map, Portier says. Commercial railroads passed through downtown Pickerington, attracting people to businesses such as the renowned Pickerington Creamery, which operated from 1900 to 1989. Though the creamery is long closed, historical artifacts are on display at its former site, 94 W. Church St.
In its early years, Pickerington was home to a Methodist church, a four-lane duckpin bowling alley, boxing matches downtown, movies shown on the side of what is now Park Alley Banquet Hall, a Carnegie Library, farmland and schoolhouses, to which students were transported by horse-drawn wagons. The first high school graduating class consisted of four students.
Christina Szuch is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at gbishop@cityscenemediagroup.com.
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