Popular Big Crowd Events Follow an Era of Weekend Cookouts That Got People Off the Couch 

By Pauline Masson –

In the recent decades at given times Pacific residents have been able to stroll among hundreds of antique autos on St. Louis Street, hear two-days of Bluegrass music in the park, watch St. Patrick’s Day, Mardi Gras, and Christmas parades, witness one of the biggest chainsaw carving competitions in the U.S., stroll along the Moving Wall (Vietnam Veterans Memorial), take a chance on a $10,000 lottery, and cook in a in a Kansas City Barbecue competition.

The story of these popular gatherings that filled Pacific life in the two decades before COVID, can be tied loosely to  barbecue. 

Fundraiser barbecues to be exact – the good weather cookouts that athletic teams, churches and civic groups staged to raise money for their uniforms, annual events, or their favorite charity. This is what in a given era lured residents out of their homes and signaled a flourishing tradition of community togetherness.

For a some obscure reason, in the late 1990s and early 2000s local beef grower and weekend barbecue chef Bill McLaren volunteered to cook barbecue for many of these benefit cookouts. He had a hard time saying no to any group. When he more and more often he found himself asked to cook for two groups on the same weekend, he invited civic and not-for-profit groups to meet and talk about all working on the same schedule. He called for an annual calendar that would not only give each benefit its special day with no competition, but it would also free up group members to help each other stage their benefits. 

In 2001, the group organized the Pacific Community Action Committee (PCAC) as a committee of the Pacific Partnership that Jim McHugh and then Mayor Jill Pigg organized to revitalize downtown Pacific. The new PCAC elected officers, created an annual calendar, and turned its eyes to public events that might bring people out.

By coincidence the following year Laura and Dennis Reichert of Catawissa approached the PCAC saying they wanted to stage a chainsaw carving competition to raise funds for the Children’s Miracle Network. Thirty carvers from across the U.S. would each set a block of wood in the center of a plastic skirt in Pacific Station Plaza and in 90 minutes carve a complete bear, eagle, Indian, or fish sculpture.The completed art works were offered for sale in a continuous public bidding process.

PCAC members supported the contest, worked as spotters during the bidding and helped load purchases into vehicles throughout the two day event. 

The demonstration not only filled downtown with spectators from near and far, it raised $56,000, matching the amount raised at the 2002 Ridgeway (PA) Rendezvous, the world’s largest chainsaw competition, and putting Pacific on the map as a public event venue.

McLaren marveled at the skill required for carving lifelike figures from wood with a chainsaw. 

“It’s an unforgiving art. If you make a mistake, you can’t fix it,” he said .“With metal, if you make a mistake you can re-cut, re-weld, and make anything you can see.”

He could anyway.

McLaren is a multi-tasker of the first water. He and his wife Linda, operate two beef cattle farms where they grow and market free range beef under the name Crooked Creek Beef, maintain the historic Howe Valley Farm, made famous by McLaren’s great uncle John Howe –  today as a busy wedding and public events venue – and run McLaren Grading.

In a burst of creativity that enlivened church and Boy Scout barbecue fundraisers, McLaren went into the welding shop of his McLaren Grading headquarters on Phelan Road and cut and welded together a replica steam locomotive with a side door that opened to a barbecue cooker. He would eventually made two of the omnipresent train cookers.

In 2008 he and Linda, donated the first steam train barbecue cooker, dubbed Engine 999, that they had used to raise funds for the Pacific Indian Sports Club, to the club for future fundraisers. He went back in his welding shop and built Engine 953 – a 1/3 gauge replica of the Eureka & Palisade Railroad at Palisade, Nevada. This is the cooker that he still uses and is sure to stop passersby for a look.

Clearly McLaren did not create all the public events that were held in the first two decades of this century. But his barbecue cookers and the PCAC fundraiser fraternity of Gung ho crowd pleasers set a standard for community togetherness

For twenty years, from the turn of the century to the Covid pandemic, one by one, the Dan Donnelly Backpack Program, Downtown Merchants Association, Chamber of Commerce, City of Pacific, and the PCAC/ Pacific Partnership hosted events that got residents off their collective couches. The barbecue trend merged into a rush of outdoor activities. 

In 2002 alone the Pacific Partnership sponsored the first Railroad Day celebration that lured an estimated 4,000 people into downtown Pacific and moved the Tri County Early Iron Car Show from the city Park to Downtown Pacific creating an event that is arguably the city’s most popular event, and continues to this day to draw crowds of 12,000 to 20,000. 

The Chamber of Commerce introduced Spookfest, the safe trick or treat venue that filled the City Park each Halloween for a dozen years. And at the urging of Alderman Rick Layton, the City hosted the first Independence Day fireworks display the city had seen in 45 years. Thanks to fundraising by Alderman Carol Johnson, that  event continued in City Park until 2013 when it was moved to the Blackburn Park Bluff as a finale to the Car Show.

That same year the Chamber of Commerce kicked off an annual fundraising banquet and lottery, dubbed Fantasy Night, where for the next seven years a local not-for-profit organization shared the proceeds, and a lucky patron walked off with a $10,000 cash prize. As enthusiasm for the lottery waned, the Chamber traded the lottery for its current musical fundraiser, Pianos for a Purpose.

On June 11, 2003, a crowd of well-wishers, government officials and visiting delegations, turned out when the City of Pacific hosted a celebration of a local landmark’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Mayor Jeff Titter read a proclamation naming “Red Cedar Day.” Jim Conklin, California Route 66 president, coordinated an eight-state road trip to raise awareness about “The Mother Road,” to be present for the celebration by hanging an official Route 66 sign on the front of the restaurant. It was not the first time the iconic eatery had been recognized by out of state visitors. When Good Morning America toured Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles for a series of reports, at the end of the reports, Charles Gibson asked the road crew whether they had had a favorite stop on Route 66. “We did and it was unanimous,” one member answered. “It was a restaurant outside St. Louis called the Red Cedar Inn.”

2006 was a banner year.

The Dan Donnelly Backpack Program hosted four parades – Mardi Gras, St. Patrick’s Day, Veterans Day, and a Christmas Parade that ended at the East Osage Plaza that treated young participants to bicycles, hair cuts, shoes and candy.The Mardi Gras parade, in spite of 30 degree temperatures, attracted 67 entries making it the longest parade the city had ever seen. In 2013 when the Backpack program was dissolved,  Dave McHugh of Great Pacific Coffee Company fame, organized the Downtown Merchant’s Association. With Larry Mueller and CarolJohnson as chairs, the Merchants introduced a St. Patrick’s Day Parade to celebrate the local Irish Community. Adding Mardi Gras, Veterans Day and Christmas, they would field four parades that year.

In May, the PCAC hosted a Community Pride Day Fair in the Park and on the weekend of August 17-18, sponsored two events in one weekend, August 17-18 – a Bluegrass Festival hosted by Michelle Bastean and Dee Walton, and Kansas City Barbecue competition.

In November the Pacific Park Board filled the City Park for five days when the City hosted of the Moving Wall – the traveling Vietnam Veterans Memorial – a half-size replica of the actual memorial in Washington D.C. Alderman Dave Monroe and Park Board President Tracy (Maher) Gullet campaigned for and managed the event.

The display was lighted and open 24 hour a day to accommodate visitors. To make sure that elderly and handicapped individuals had access to the wall, local business N.B.West Asphalt, paved a seven-foot wide path from the parking area, along the entire length in front of the wall with asphalt. After the display left, West crews came back and took up the asphalt to return the grass to the field

That same year, the Chamber of Commerce announced it would no longer support the popular Spookfest, Johnson Mueller and the Downtown Merchants agreed to manage the celebration, moving it to St.Louis Street and giving it a new name, Monsterfest. To this day it is one of the town’s most popular events. 

When Monsterfest, which focuses largely on children, was one of the events cancelled due to Covid, The Pacific Partnership revived it as one of its four annual events along with the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, the ever popular Car Show and Christmas on the Plaza.

To be sure there have been other big public gathering in the past two decades. The introduction of Pat Smiley’s military plaques in Liberty Field Drew a big crowd. In 2013. Excitement and observers filled the town when the movie Saving Shiloh was filmed here. In 2015. Veterans of the Nike Base that once occupied the hilltop south of the city where Nike School now stands, celebrated their 50th reunion in the city park. The Iron Horse Rodeo, hosted by the City of Pacific and the Partnership, has claimed its place as a favorite event.

No mention of barbecue in Pacific would be complete without recognition of the Pacific Eagles. These weekend cookers have turned barbecue fundraisers into an art form, raising money to eliminate school lunch debts for local students and have benefited almost every not-for-profit organization in the city.