Longmont is set to celebrate its sesquicentennial Thursday at the Longmont Museum.
This virtual 150th birthday celebration will be hosted by the Longmont Chamber of Commerce’s energetic and comedic membership director, Karen Stallard. Through the course of the 90-minute celebration, Stallard will introduce Mayor Brian Bagley, who will read a proclamation naming Tuesday Longmont Day. The proclamation is slated to go before city council at its meeting this week.
“I'm really excited to represent the Longmont Chamber at the event, after all we are 134 years old ourselves. I think what's exciting is that we can celebrate how far we've come in 150 years. I hope to bring some fun and also honor Longmont's history. I was born and raised in Longmont so this feels like a pretty historic opportunity, after all you only turn 150 once,” Stallard said.
At the heart of the event will be Erik Mason, curator of history at the Longmont Museum, and a panel of people from diverse backgrounds sharing stories of Longmont’s past and hopes for the future. The panel also will include a representative from a Native American tribe, “to remind us that Longmont may be 150 years old but there were people here long before,” said Justin Veach, auditorium and events manager for the museum.
Mason, in an email, said he will present an “overview of the history of this region. It will cover the challenges that the people of the St. Vrain Valley have faced and how they have worked to overcome them.”
Special segments of the evening will include a video message from Astronaut Vance D. Brand and the great, great grandson of Longmont co-founder Seth Terry.
Brand was born in Longmont in 1931 and graduated from Longmont High School in 1949. Logging over 746 hours in space, Brand served as a command module pilot during the first U.S.-Soviet joint spaceflight in 1975 and as commander of three space shuttle missions.
Terry was a member of the locating committee for the Chicago-Colorado Colony from which the city grew. The first elected president of the colony, Terry is best known for yearly diaries from 1867 to 1901. The entries describe the founding of Longmont, the development of town, agriculture and irrigation and personal accounts that provide a glimpse into his life, according to the city’s Seth Terry Collection archives.
“Milestones like the 150th provide an opportunity to review our past, to see how the trials and the successes of today’s Longmont are rooted in decisions made by earlier generations. We face many of the same issues as they did — how we learn from the past marks our progress as a community,” Mason said.
The program will end with the opening of a 25-year-old time capsule that has been stored at the museum, along with the Longmont City Council singing “Happy Birthday” and a cake, Veach said.
“I'm most looking forward to sitting down and hearing stories from some amazing fellow Longmonsters. Folks will have to tune in to see who we have joining us. Plus, the upside to not being able to have a big party with everyone together, is that I get more cake,” Stallard said.
Longmont’s 150th birthday celebration starts at 7:30 p.m. and can be seen on Facebook Live on Comcast channel 8/880 and Longmont Public Media’s website using new cameras recently installed at Stewart Auditorium.
To continue the looking at the last 150 years the museum has organized other programming including “The History of Race and Social Justice” on Feb. 11, “Monet’s Longmont” on March 11, “The Longmonster” on April 1 and “Stories of Longmont Parks: A Conversation with Paula Fitzgerald” on April 29. The celebration will continue into the summer with the Summer Concert Series.
On Aug. 7, the museum plans to open a special exhibit to commemorate the sesquicentennial celebration and the city “from before its founding to today,” Veach said.
Mason said, “We are seeking specific artifacts to tie into stories that we are developing for this exhibit — objects related to the history of beer and alcohol in Longmont, photos of cruising in Longmont, items related to the struggle for racial equity in Longmont, and damaged items from last fall’s Calwood fire near Longmont. In general, we seek items that help to tell the story of Longmont.”
Anyone with items to contribute to the exhibit can contact Mason at 303-651-8969 or [email protected].
The special exhibit will remain open through January 2022.
“We invite anyone who lives in or loves Longmont to join us in celebrating 150 years of Longmont,” Veach said.
