A northwest Iowa community of nearly a thousand residents will celebrate the 150th anniversary of its founding this weekend.
Events in Aurelia begin Friday afternoon. Diane Weathers is part of town’s “All School” committee. “From 4-7 we’re going to have the Heritage House and Museum open. The Kiddie Parade starts around six o’clock at the City Park,” she says. “The big thing is our community dinner. That’ll be from 5-7 at the community center and during that time we’ll have a beard contest at about 6:30.”
Nancy Webb, another Aurelia resident, says the big event Saturday afternoon is a parade. “From 9 to 11:30 we have an open house at the school so that all the people coming back can reminisce and walk through the school,” she says.
For decades, the Aurelia Community School District was the only district in the state that had unique names for its boys and girls teams. Aurelia boys teams were known as the Bulldogs. Girls teams from Aurelia were known as the Atoms. The Alta and Aurelia School Districts began sharing grades in the 1990s and voted to merge in 2017.
The City of Aurelia was named for the daughter of man who owned the Illinois Central Railroad. The community was was a stop on the rail line, which ran to Chicago.
(By Ryan Thompson, KAYL, Storm Lake)