Riverside to celebrate 150 years

By Molly Roberts
Posted 6/21/22

The City of Riverside is turning 150 years old this year, which will be celebrated this weekend during Trek Fest. The 150th Committee, an off shoot of volunteers from the Voyage Home Museum and …

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Riverside to celebrate 150 years

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The City of Riverside is turning 150 years old this year, which will be celebrated this weekend during Trek Fest. The 150th Committee, an off shoot of volunteers from the Voyage Home Museum and Riverside History Center, have been working since last July to put together a celebration for the city’s sesquicentennial.

First came the idea for the booklet; volunteers worked with other community members to put together a large booklet of all things Riverside. The booklet, which will be available during Trek Fest and the 150th celebration, features pages about local businesses, churches, organizations and parks, as well as historical articles about the city’s past, including the log cabin in Railroad Park and the flooding caused by the English River in 1993 and 2008.

“The 150th anniversary of the City of Riverside was too important to just let it go by and not do anything,” said Chris Kirkwood, a member of the 150th Committee. “Coming out of Covid, people seem to have a renewed interest in connecting with their pasts and their families, so we started putting together the booklet to highlight the history of our town.”

At the celebration, a Trek Fest quilt, featuring 20 vintage Trek Fest t-shirts from years past, will be auctioned off after the parade, around noon in Hall Park.

“A year or so ago, we started talking about how we were going to celebrate Riverside’s 150th anniversary,” said Mary Jane Stumpf, who works at the museum and is active with the 150th celebration committee. “We realized that we did have duplicates of a lot of our shirts, so we went through them, and someone came up with the idea of making the quilt.”

The quilt was made by Angie Miller of Sweater Creations in Lone Tree and is currently on display in the Voyage Home Museum and will remain on display until it is auctioned off. Proceeds from the quilt auction will go toward renovations and improvements to the Voyage Home Museum and Riverside History Center.

The auction will also feature a Bat’leth guitar, similar to the one on display in the museum, as well as other items. The museum will be open late on Friday evening, open and after the parade (but closed during) with extended hours on Saturday evening, as well for anyone wanting to see the collection or pick up souvenirs and t-shirts.

Kirkwood and Stumpf said combining the 150th celebration and the 37th Trek Fest makes sense, since much of Riverside’s history is now tied in with its Star Trek fame as the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk.

“It’s a balancing act because you have both the history of Riverside and Star Trek in there together. Would anyone come and look at our historical things if we didn’t have the Star Trek things in there? A few but not very many. The real draw is the Trek stuff, which is unique and important to the community,” Kirkwood said. “Now we’re at the point where we have to include it in the history because it’s become a part of who we are. It is.”

Stumpf and Kirkwood said that when William Shatner came to Riverside to film Invasion Iowa, which aired on Spike TV in March 2005, many of the citizens of Riverside gained a greater understanding of the city’s Star Trek connections and how they make the city unique.

“When Shatner visited Riverside, it was a publicity event, but he was such a congenial person and he made it personal,” Kirkwood said. “He made it a personal experience with so many people in town — and not just him, but the people who work for him, the people who did all the movie stuff behind the scenes. They kept their trailers open so anybody in town could wander in and see how they put a show like that together. It was very interesting and fascinating. Everybody in town had an interest in it from a different vantage point. I think that’s really when Riverside said, ‘Yes, we own this.’”

Trekfest and the 150th celebration will kick off at 5 p.m. on Friday, June 24 when the Kid Zone and food trucks open, as well as a ribbon cutting ceremony for newly renovated Railraod Park. Events will continue through Friday evening and all day Saturday, with events such as a fun run, parade, costume contest, bingo and more. For a full schedule of events, look to page 14A in this week’s edition of The News.