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1994
Two hundred years, marked in trails and stone: Fort Wayne celebrated the bicentennial of Wayne's fort in 1994, a century after the party it had nearly forgotten — and the year's most permanent product was a way of walking through the history itself. The bicentennial committee created the Heritage Trail, a self-guided walking trail of three loops based downtown and featuring the sites of the city's beginnings, and in 1994 selected ARCH — the organization the 1976 committee had spun off — to become the trail's steward. The trail has since grown to four published routes, carried in the markers entry below.
The year's stone record stands in Memorial Park: a memorial tribute to the past, present and future veterans of Allen County, raised by the Memorial Park Neighborhood Association and inscribed, on the Historical Marker Database's reading, as the association's "lasting legacy for the Fort Wayne bicentennial celebration, August 1994." And the bicentennial day itself — October 22, 1994 — had been appointed thirty-four years in advance, when a radio station buried a box in Swinney Park and set that date for its opening. That appointment is the first entry in the capsule record that follows.
Sources:
- ARCH Inc., "Becoming ARCH" (archfw.org) — the Heritage Trail's creation by the bicentennial committee and ARCH's 1994 selection as steward.
- Historical Marker Database — the Memorial Park veterans tribute inscription (August 1994) and the WOWO capsule's appointed date.
- City and reference accounts of the 1994 bicentennial observance, via the Fort Wayne city article's sourced line — the celebration year itself.