Pioneer Farms in Spotlight at Oak Creek Fall Festival

The Oak Creek Historical Society will spotlight the city’s pioneer farms from the 1800s, along with a wide variety of living-history presenters, at its 15th annual Fall Festival on Sunday.

The free event will be held from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the society’s Pioneer Village, at S. 15th Ave. and E. Forest Hill Ave. 

This year's title is "A Tribute to Oak Creek Pioneer Farming." Visitors are invited to the old Town Hall to check the 1876 plat map to see whose farm they live on now, along with who owned the sites of businesses where they shop. 

Research about some of the original farms will be available, and descendants of pioneer families are asked to provide information and photos. Equipment from the Pioneer Farm Machinery Club will be on display, in addition to an operating antique water pump. 

A continuous slide show of Oak Creek history will be running in the Miller Farm Shed, one of seven historic structures at the site dating back to the Hughes Log Cabin from the 1840s and the old Town Hall, built in 1874. 

Oak Creek Township was composed of modern-day Oak Creek and South Milwaukee; Oak Creek became a city in 1955.

Re-enactors at the festival will include some from the Civil War, plus the descendant of an 1864 Medal of Honor recipient, and the 3rd Recon Troop and 3rd Infantry Division from World War II. Others will discuss the history of the Blair Mountain Miners Revolt in West Virginia in 1921 and the revolt in Ireland in 1919.

The festival also will feature a working blacksmith, a fur trader, weaver and spinner. Authentic Native American crafts will be for sale, along with luncheon items, baked goods, honey, books and other publications – including three dealing with Oak Creek history – along with many other products.

A handmade quilt is the grand prize in the Historical Society’s fund-raising raffle, for which tickets cost $1. The many other prizes include an autographed football from the 2012 Green Bay Packers.

More information is available from Diane Schumacher, festival chair, at pdschu@sbcglobal.net. The society’s website is http://ochistorical.freeservers.com/