The Party in the Park includes a free meal at 5 p.m., a street dance starting at 8 p.m. and a 45-60-minute firework show at 10:30 p.m.

Pioneer Day starts the following day, Sunday, with live music, self-guided tours of the village, family fun activities, a raffle and a free-will steak dinner.

“Our one goal is to get people to come to the village,” said Bryan Quigley, board president of the Lake County Historical Society.

Quigley said one of the main attractions for Pioneer Day is the music.

Submitted Photo The Niobe Hall stage where Lawrence Welk once played, now in the Pioneer Village, is newly refurbished with an antique guitar and banjo collection donated by Richard “Rick” Lofgren and Vickie Lofgren. Photo from Richard Lofgren.

“We set up a big 30-foot by 90-foot tent right up in the front of the Pioneer Village. We put a stage and the sound equipment up there,” he said.

Each year the Historical Society looks for acts that will attract a wide variety of people. The headlining act for this year is former American Idol contestant Zach Thomas. Thomas was also a 2023 nominee for the Midwest Country Music Organization’s Male Vocalist of the Year. Thomas is originally a Minnesota resident but currently lives in Fargo.

Other musical acts performing that day hail from across North Dakota, including Kenmare, Minot and a student from Bismarck State College.

One of the acts, Sand Creek, is the husband and wife duo, Rick and Vickie Lofgren. The Lofgrens recently donated their entire antique guitar and banjo collection to the Pioneer Village and will be playing on the Niobe Hall stage they helped refurbish and decorate with said antique collection.

Niobe Hall is one of the 27 buildings that make up the Pioneer Village Museum. Niobe Hall was a former town hall and is now set up as a mercantile store display. The hall still retains its original jail doors and post office.

Submitted Photo Participants in the log-cutting contest work together while sawing logs during last year’s Pioneer Day celebration. Photo from the Lake County Historical Society.

Another town hall in Pioneer Village is Norma Town Hall. The hall was moved out of the community of Norma in the 1970s. The hall is now home to a display of antique quilts. A few of the quilts were made by the Red Cross in 1917 to raise money for World War I efforts.

The hall also includes a Native American rock collection, an X-ray machine from 1928, antique wheelchairs that were built by area residents, the first incubator used in the Kenmare hospital, a wood popcorn popper and a genealogical research center.

Along the boardwalk there is Cindy’s Millinery Shop, McBride’s Meat Market and Anne’s Dress Shop.

“To me (Anne’s Dress Shop) is one of the nicest dress shops one can imagine in a pioneer village,” Quigley said. “Our oldest dress we can document is from 1870, with shoes and everything,” he said.

Anne’s Dress Shop also contains a multi-generational wedding dress collection.

“We have the daughter’s wedding dress, the mother’s wedding dress, the grandmother’s wedding dress and the great-grandmother’s wedding dress. They’re all different, and I’m thinking the oldest one out of those four is from the 1800s,” Quigley said.

Quigley said his favorite item in the entire museum collection would have to be his wife’s wedding dress.

“She wore it for our wedding, her sister wore it for her wedding, her mother wore it for her wedding and her grandmother made it in 1949,” Quigley said.

The Pioneer Village also has a Toy Museum containing antique toys, a Military Museum containing uniforms from the Spanish-American War, and a WWI Exhibit containing dog tags from a prisoner of war.

Quigley said for the most part, everything is hands-on and children can touch some of the items as long as they’re careful.

“The only thing really roped off that (visitors) can’t touch are the toys in the toy museum because we have 2,000 toys all behind plexiglass in display cases,” he said.

Children at Pioneer Day also can participate in the scavenger hunt. Children who complete the scavenger hunt will have their names put into a hat. The two winning names drawn from the hat each will receive a new bicycle.

The log-cutting contest is another activity both adolescents and adults enjoy. The contest begins at 4 p.m. on Pioneer Day and is free.

“The biggest thing about this day is we’re having a raffle,” Quigley said. The raffle is one of the Lake County Historical Society’s largest fundraisers of the year.

The Pioneer Day raffle will be giving away about $8,000 in prizes.

“We sell these raffle tickets all over because this is one of the things we do to help pay our bills – to pay for the insurance, pay for the mowing, pay for the paint we have to buy, all of that,” Quigley said.

The raffle fundraiser proceeds also will go toward a bathroom construction project. The new bathrooms will be wheelchair accessible and will have electricity, running water and sewage.

“We’ve never had city water and sewage at this part of the village, so it’s a pretty spendy project. Just getting the sewage lines to the village was over $18,000. So, we have to raise some money to pay for that kind of thing,” Quigley said.

Last but not least, there’s the Pioneer Day free steak dinner. The free-will donation steak dinner begins at 5 p.m.

“We take whatever people give us. I’m not sure what all we’ll get, but one thing for sure is the steak, barbecued right on site,” Quigley said. Purchasable food options also will be available for breakfast and lunch earlier in the day.