Admittedly, this year’s Frontier Days festival in Arlington Heights was a challenge. What with navigating around construction at its annual site, Recreation Park, to being forced to cancel some of its events due to the heavy rain — including the highly anticipated drone show — longtime volunteers still found reason to celebrate.
Frontier Days’ fairway, circa 1984
For one thing, they are grateful to see the festival still going strong, with new generations of families attending and volunteers stepping up.
It was former Arlington Heights Trustee Dwight Walton who co-chaired the original festival. In 1974, then Mayor James Ryan asked Walton to chair the Arlington Heights Bicentennial Commission leading up to the nation’s 1976 Bicentennial.
One year later, Walton chaired the village’s first major July 4th celebration, which then became the annual Frontier Days Festival. He and his wife, Lou, continued to chair the festival until 1980.
When Black Bart showed up, it gave the festival a western theme — and its name, Frontier Days.
“It started with just a carnival,” Lou Walton recalls. “Then the folks at Weber began grilling brats and burgers. Over the next few years, various groups volunteered to run food booths, and sell tickets. The country store popped up, and Black Bart showed up, — the old stagecoach robber — so we had to build a Western jail and bank for him to rob — thus, the name, Frontier Days.”
Jim Glueckert returned to co-chair Frontier Days this year. He has been involved since the first year, when he was the supervisor at Recreation Park. He remembers that the committee members used Recreation’s building for their finance area and headquarters.
“My recollection was it was going to be a one year event and it went so well that the committee decided to do it again,” Glueckert says. “It grew from using a small segment in the front of the park to now using most everything in the park.
Red shirt volunteers run the fest.
“The original committee, which Dwight Walton chaired, was represented by many village and park employees,” he adds, “and the Arlington Heights Chamber of Commerce was well represented.
Walton adds that the festival committee grew to include organizing the July 4th parade as well. The parade has grown to be recognized as one of the largest — and most well attended — parades in the Northwest suburbs.
“We actually started with a few of us on horseback, clomping thru town,” says Walton of the old west theme, estimating the year to be around 1978. “When we arrived at Recreation Park, we were surprised to see a crowd.
“That same year, Scout groups distributed flyers to homes,” she adds, “and suddenly it seemed like everyone in town was coming to the Festival.”
They still are. Annual attendance at Frontier Days ranges from 80,000 to 100,000 over the course of its five-day run, with weather playing a major role. The festival is an independent, 501C3 charitable organization, not funded by Village of Arlington Heights, and over the years has donated more than $3 million to community groups and nonprofit organizations.
Beyond Glueckert and Walton, other longtime volunteers still involved this year included Bill and Pat Peery, Donna Jonas and Carmella Lowth, to name just a few.
Glueckert says the legacy of Frontier Days is driven by the Arlington Heights children who grew up remembering the good times they had coming to the festival, and they want to come back and relive some of those memories with their children.
“We hear of many people who have moved out of town but come back over the 4th to attend Frontier Days.” Glueckert says. “My children all grew up with us volunteering at Frontier Days and spending those five days at the festival. They now help out, one comes in from Indiana and one from Georgia, with the closest one in Palatine.
“Now my grandkids are involved,” he adds, “and although they are young they were here this year and wanted to help in any way they could.”
And so a new generation of volunteers continues to sustain the legacy of Frontier Days: volunteering for a festival that entertains families and brings the community together for a cherished summertime tradition.”
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