Watkins Museum opens Douglas County bicentennial exhibit, free through August 15

The Watkins Museum opened a new exhibit that turns Douglas County’s 1976 bicentennial celebrations into a mirror for the next national milestone. “America’s Bicentennial in Douglas County” went on view Friday in the first-floor Community Gallery and lobby at 1047 Massachusetts St. in Lawrence, where admission is free through Aug. 15.

The display brings together photos from the bicentennial parade on Massachusetts Street, model train cars from the “Spirit of America” set and materials tied to Clenece Hills, who chaired local bicentennial efforts. Taken together, the pieces show how Lawrence and neighboring communities chose to present themselves half a century ago: patriotic, organized and deeply invested in public celebration.

Museum records say Douglas County began planning for the bicentennial around 1972, with Flag Day 1975 marking the point when events started in earnest. Local officials and volunteers from Lawrence, Eudora, Baldwin City, Lecompton and Clinton worked on countywide events while also building their own local observances, a reminder that the county’s civic identity was never confined to one town center.

Steve Nowak, executive director of the Watkins Museum, said the exhibit is meant as a “trip down memory lane,” adding that people who remember 1976 may recall July 4 celebrations, red-white-and-blue decorations and learning to spell “bicentennial.” He also said he hopes younger visitors come away with a clearer sense of how the nation has changed in 50 years.

Andrew Stockmann, the museum’s curator of exhibitions, said the show was designed to balance the patriotic feeling of the bicentennial with a comparison to this year’s semiquincentennial observances. He said the museum wants visitors to think about “celebration vs. commemoration,” a distinction that matters in Douglas County because the surviving record highlights parades, banners and civic coordination more than the everyday lives that unfolded beyond the photographs.

The exhibit also lands as part of a broader America at 250 partnership in Lawrence that began Jan. 29, 2026, involving the Watkins Museum, the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics, Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area and the Lawrence Arts Center. Across the county, heritage partners also secured an $8,000 Kansas Tourism Marketing Grant to promote “Finding Freedom: The Promise of 1776 in Douglas County, Kansas,” a six-site exhibition running from May through August 2026.

Seen together, the projects ask residents to compare the county’s public image in 1976 with the story it wants to tell now. The Watkins exhibit makes clear that Douglas County once celebrated itself through flags, parades and volunteerism, and America 250 will test how much fuller that portrait can become.