Keystone Battery to host Living History Day

The local Keystone Battery A Pennsylvania and Burroughs Tennessee Light Artillery group is providing a Living History Day on Saturday, Aug. 3. The Living History Day event begins at 8 a.m. at the Ritzville Train Depot and includes civil war and cannon demonstrations throughout the day, as well as a nighttime demonstration.

The group will have tents set up in the grass alongside the depot, as well as the cannon. The group will be dressed in historic clothing and plans to portray the history living conditions by hosting demonstrations of a variety of crafts and fiber arts. The demonstrations will last throughout the day and the highlight of the fiber arts display is expected to be Pat Evans’ spinning wheel demonstration.

Throughout the day, the group hopes to provide cannon drills and infantry drills for onlookers. The infantry group members will be dressed to represent the confederate and union sides. All of the group members are available to answer questions and inquires about the living history event.

Recently, the Train Depot received a donation of a semaphore and while it is not fully installed, visitors are encouraged to come see the recent addition to the local museum. The semaphore is one of the oldest fixed signals used for railways and is located near the antique farming equipment next to the Depot.

At 2 p.m., all of the group members from Living History Day site will travel to the Dr. Frank R. Burroughs’ Home and Museum for an ice cream reception. The reception is open to the public and ice cream is available by donation.

Laura Evans, one of the event’s coordinators, said the local group is working in cooperation with the Ritzville Museums to help promote Ritzville and bring visitors to the downtown area. Throughout the day, tours of both the Burroughs’ Home and the Train Depot will be available for visitors.

After the conclusion of the ice cream reception at 3 p.m., the Living History Day re-enactors will travel to the Wheat Land Communities’ Fairgrounds to provide military demonstrations. Depending on the amount of re-enactors available in the afternoon hours, the group will also have a skirmish.

Originally the Living History Day was supposed to be a weekend event, but Laura explained scheduling conflicts limited the event to one day. The group hopes to continue to host the event in the future years to attract new people to the Ritzville community and have the event grow.

“We’re wanting to have a two-day event where we would have two battles on each day and we’re looking for a field that would be large enough to handle such an event,” Laura explained.

“It does take time to build up to have all of the units participate.”

Many units from across the state of Washington, Oregon and Idaho are all likely to participate in a large event, Laura said. The group hopes that this year’s event is a small step in the right direction to create a larger event next year.

“Our goal would be to have an event in this area of that stature to have a full weekend like that. These events have drawn up between 1,000 to 5,000 people after a couple of years, and being a central location should help,” Laura said about the future of the Living History Days event.

The event concludes at 8 p.m. at the fairgrounds when the group begins a nighttime demonstration.

The nighttime demonstration includes the firing of the cannon and also a military reenactment.

The artillery group is also currently looking for families who have ancestors who fought in the Civil War buried in the area. The group hopes to honor those who served at future events, such as Living History Days.

For more information about the Living History Day event, or to have a family member listed with the local group, contact Laura at 659-0594 or by email at [email protected]. More information about the group and its history can be found at http://keystonebattery.org.