City of Houston celebrates half-century Saturday

WASILLA — The City of Houston will be celebrating Founders Day as usual this weekend, but with a subtle increase in significance — it’s the town’s 50th birthday party, too.

This year marks half a century since Houston’s 1966 incorporation as a third-class city, approved by 20 of 25 voters on May 21 of that year. A city council was established on June 6, and in the early 1970s Houston was re-classified as a second-class city. In 1984, Aug. 18 was declared Founders Day.

In the Frontiersman that day, founder Calvin Hartman was reported to have said that incorporation was necessary for the city to maintain its identity.

“People from Anchorage were building homes around Big Lake and Willow had the winter carnival. We had to incorporate to maintain our identity,” he said.

While there’s certainly a sense of hometown pride among city residents, Houston Mayor and 38-year resident Virgie Thompson said the Founders Day celebration draws people from Wasilla as well as Anchorage, in addition to full-time homeowners in the Big Lake-Houston area.

“It’s nice for people to come out and enjoy themselves and celebrate with us,” Thompson said.

As much as everyone enjoys a carnival, former Houston City Clerk Elsie O’Bryan said Founders Day is as much a reunion as anything else.

“It’s an opportunity for old families to get together and reminisce, and for new families to get acquainted with some of the traditions,” she said.

O’Bryan remembered the first Founders Day, which she said she helped organize to recognize the remaining “old timers” who helped “put the city together” almost 20 years prior (like Hartman). Houston City Hall had just been built, and there were no fire stations at the time, though now, much of the event takes place at Station 9-1. Only 20 people showed up in 1984, O’Bryan said, but now the city regularly sees about 2,000 attendees, Thompson said.

“We cook for 1,500 … and we usually run out of food,” Thompson said.

This year, Founders Day kicks off at 6:30 p.m. with a parade that starts near Miller’s Market and ends at the Houston Public Safety Building (Station 9-1), where there will be live music by blues-country-rock band Element 47, a silent auction and free barbecue fare from the Houston Fire Department Auxiliary. A LifeMed helicopter will also arrive at 6:30 and be on display for youth exploration.

After the parade, All About Dance will perform, and the Houston Lions Club will provide free balloon art to Founders Day attendees, while supplies last.

“(People) just love the fact that we try to focus on the family ... and events that they can do together,” Thompson said.

More activities begin at 7 p.m., including “Alaska’s Wildest Magic” with “MagicGuy” Don Russell; kids’ games at Big Lake Baptist Church; reindeer petting and feeding at the Willow Reindeer Park; a BB gun “Turkey Shoot” for kids; and a free-entry poker tournament with a $100 prize for first place. There will also be a dunk tank to support the Houston High School Football Booster Club.

New to Founders Day, but not the city of Houston, the Barons of Eskalya from the Alaska chapter of the Society for Creative Anachronism will demonstrate Medieval knight combat at 7:30 and 9 p.m. on Saturday, in place of their annual event typically held at a nearby campground.

Thompson herself will host an adult egg toss with a $100 first-place prize at 8 p.m., a cake walk at 8:30 p.m., a greased pole climb ($100 first prize) at 9 p.m. and a blueberry pie eating contest ($100 first prize) at 9:30 p.m.

“The pie eating contest is quite entertaining,” Thompson said, though she herself has never participated.

The event closes out with a sky lantern festival at 10 p.m. (weather permitting) and a fireworks show at 10:30 p.m.

“The fireworks are gonna be pretty spectacular,” the mayor said.

Thompson said the city had wanted to bring in some carnival rides from A-1 Midway, but the vendors were all booked up with the Alaska State Fair.

“It’s a shame we couldn’t do more,” Thompson said.

Neither she nor O’Bryan knew why the council chose to celebrate the city’s founding in August rather than May or June, but suspected that it may have had something to do with the idea that people would be out of town or too busy earlier in the summer.

But they always come home.

“I think it’s a great place to live, great place to raise a family and we’re just hoping that we can continue to grow to provide jobs for our local people,” Thompson said.

O’Bryan lives in Wasilla now, but said she enjoyed her time in Houston and the opportunity to make a difference — something she thought was a lot harder to do before she came to Alaska in the ’70s.

“In my job (as clerk) I was able to help the city get funded and get organized and get a base laid for the future,” she said. “Where I come from in Missouri, if your great grandma wasn’t on the election board, you couldn’t even do that.”

O’Bryan said she’ll be back in Houston for Founders Day, as she is every year, to celebrate the city.

Contact reporter Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.