The Lincoln Highway Heritage Festival committee held its annual post-festival meeting at VFW Post 3878 on Wednesday, Sept. 3, to reflect on the three-day event held Aug. 15-17 in Rochelle.

The event was held at Atwood Park this year due to planned city construction downtown that will include a new stage, storage and bathrooms structure, parking lot restoration and utility undergrounding. LHHF has been held in the downtown area since its inception.

“I think most of the people that were at the festival enjoyed the layout, carnival-wise,”LHHF Board President Lisa Schwarz said. “Our food vendors were kind of tucked in a corner along with our raffle booth. People that were at the carnival didn’t necessarily make it all the way through the festival, which made it a little hard. The music was distanced away too. We loved having all the extra space. From what we heard, attendees enjoyed all that extra space too.”

Schwarz said the new venue brought about “a lot more” work and cost. LHHF’s committee hopes to hold the event back in its typical space downtown next year if the city’s construction allows.

Schwarz and the committee thanked the City of Rochelle and the Flagg-Rochelle Community Park District for their support of the 2025 event. Rochelle Municipal Utilities worked to run water and electricity where it was needed at the park and Rochelle Mayor John Bearrows and City Manager Jeff Fiegenschuh drove shuttle buses for the event.

“We can count on the city,” LHHF Committee Member Pete Agnos said. “If we needed something, RMU and the street department were there for whatever we needed. They were really good to us. Bruns Construction donated generators for us to use.”

The LHHF committee is made up of a core group of volunteers, including Schwarz, Agnos, Kathy Yochum, Paula Combs, Dwayne Rangel, Heather Simo, Roslyn Martinez, and Debbie Howard. Others that helped with the festival included Spring Vos, Jake Frohling, Cristel Spartz, Chuck Cawley, and Rosaelia Arteaga.

The committee is always seeking more volunteers, and meeting information can be found on LHHF’s Facebook page.

“People should volunteer because we can’t get any bigger or better without more people,” Schwarz said. “Our volunteers worked really hard that weekend and picked up slack. There are only so many of us. We did a lot of work on giving people rides from their cars or from place to place. We had to do that and manage things at the festival and talk to our vendors and make sure everyone at the carnival was having a good time and behaving. If we didn’t do it, who would?

“We keep putting it out there for volunteers, and nobody ever shows up. Without our committee, there wouldn’t be a festival.”

Schwarz said 2025 was LHHF’s toughest year yet “hands down” due to the venue change. She and the committee appreciate the support and attendance by sponsors and the community.

“This is the one time a year where Rochelle gets a whole weekend to have family fun and get together,” Agnos said. “Being in this community for over 50 years, it’s just one of those things where you like the town enough to be able to do it. With the move out to Atwood with all the headaches and having to deal with everything we had to deal with, every year we end up pulling it together and it gets done.”