City’s 150th celebration showcases local government, non-profits, ditches Civil War past

Manassas celebrated its 150th anniversary on Saturday, April 1, 2023, at the Boys and Girls Club, 9501 Dean Park Lane.

The celebration showcased local government services, with several departments, such as parks and recreation and public works displaying information and wares to residents. Multiple non-profits, such as Keep Manassas Beautiful, which advertised its upcoming Bee Festival, and UVA Prince William Medical Center, were on and had to speak with residents.

At 3 p.m., city leaders and business owners gathered inside the Boys and Girls to fill a time capsule with artifacts, such as newspapers from Insidenova Prince William and Prince Willaim Times and a bottle of whiskey from KO Distilling, which was placed into a time capsule to be buried under a rock at City Hall (currently undergoing a $12 million renovation), not to be exhumed for 50 years.

Also inside, organizers showed videos of residents telling their stories about living and working in Manassas. Outside, guides provided tours of the Manassas Industrial School site, where a bronze statue of founder Jennie Dean stands, a freed slave who founded the school for blacks in 1893.

Fire trucks, police cars, and heavy equipment gathered in the parking lot outside the Boys and Girls Club, allowing children to see them up close. Children could also have their faces painted and climb a rock wall.

Multiple food trucks sold food and drink to festivalgoers. Attendees were told to park in the city’s downtown, about a mile away, and board an OmniRide shuttle bus, which dropped off and picked up riders at the Boys and Girls Club front entrance.

A firework show was scheduled to cap off the event in the evening. Also, during the event, city leaders broke ground on a project to add new tennis and pickleball courts and a new baseball field to Dean Park.

The city also unveiled a painting of Mayor Michelle Davis Younger, whose four-year term began in 2021.

The city, and the nearby Manassas National Battlefield, are the site of two major Civil War battles, 1861 and 1862. However, the festival was devoid of Civil War history or the reactors which, in years past, have attended city events to tell the story of the war that reshaped the U.S., where 2.5% of the country’s population was killed (it would be about 7 million people if the war were fought today).

The city’s communication officer and police chief planned the event. Initially, all of the events had been planned to take place outdoors. However, a high-wind warning into effect at noon prompted organizers to move the formal program and exhibits indoors.

Manassas rail junction was completed in 1852, linking Washington, D.C., with the Shenandoah Valley. After the Civil War, the settlement grew, and the town was chartered in 1873.

The town became a city independent of Prince William County in 1975.