Read more about Evansville’s chapter in the American story in the July/August 2026 feature story.
Celebrating Independence Day in Evansville was very different in 1970. The old flood wall along Riverside Drive blocked any surface-level view of the river. Crowds moved around it and below to Dress Plaza and the undeveloped areas along the Ohio River levee to watch the city’s first Fourth of July fireworks that summer. Hosted Downtown at the old Press Club, it was attended by many workers in the local news industry, which sponsored a beer garden in an empty block. Sherrianne Standley, wife of the late Evansville Courier writer Barry Standley, remembers him proudly wearing bell-bottom jeans featuring a patriotic flag pattern.
Witnesses described the scene as “controlled chaos.” A young Sunday Courier and Press reporter named David Longest — now known as David James from his longtime broadcasting career — wrote that the 75,000 people crowded into the riverfront looked like a “conservative Woodstock.” It was, at the time, the largest such display in the nation. Patrick Wathen, then a 19-year-old Sunday Courier and Press staffer, helped set up and man the beer garden, known regionally as a “bierstube.” He recalled no fencing around it: “It was ‘Katy bar the door,’ except there was no door!”
Former Evansville Press editor Bill Jackson remembers the arrest of a prominent citizen who volunteered to serve but didn’t have a bartender’s license. “I had the responsibility of bailing him out,” Jackson says. He also recollects the club trying to sell brats but only having one crockpot. “One customer questioned whether his brat was done. I spent the rest of the event worried if we were poisoning the community!” he laughs.
From that celebration in 1970, Evansville’s Freedom Festival was born. As the event grew, a foundation was set up to help fund it each year. In 1975, metal buttons were sold to raise money for the fireworks and also admitted the wearer to events and discounts at vendors. In 1976, as the nation celebrated its bicentennial, Evansville joined the festivities. In April, President Gerald Ford stopped in town during his ultimately unsuccessful re-election campaign and rode in a motorcade up Main Street. Mayor Russell Lloyd Sr. presented Ford with his own Freedom Festival pin as well as a mug created by Louisville Stoneware Co. featuring the soon-to-be erected Four Freedoms Monument.
Late Convention and Visitors Bureau President Bill Brooks wanted the festival to generate national awareness, and in 1979, Evansville became a site for hydroplane racing. Thunder on the Ohio attracted major network sporting attention, and the new names it brought to the city continued impacting Evansville even after local hydroplane racing ended in 2009. Two years later, the Hadi Shriners got involved, and the event was rebranded as ShrinersFest.
Kelley Coures retired in January 2024 as executive director of the Evansville Department of Metropolitan Development. He has shared his vast knowledge of local history with Evansville Living readers since 2011.
