Indiana History Featured at Northern Indiana Power from the Past

 Northern Indiana Power from the Past returns for its 39th year this week. The antique farm machinery show will be held tomorrow through Sunday in the Winamac Town Park.

Josh Wilder, the organization’s president, says visitors will be able to see a variety of tractors at this year’s event. “We’re featuring Cockshutt tractors,” he says. “We haven’t had them here for several years. Of course, we were rained out last year, and International was the feature last year. A lot of those folks are going to come back to our show this year, just because it didn’t work out for them or us last year, so we’re going to have pretty good displays.”

This year’s Northern Indiana Power from the Past Show has been included on the list of official Indiana Bicentennial Legacy Projects. Wilder says the show is marking the occasion with a special exhibit on 200 years of farming equipment in the state, “We’ve got a beautiful display down here of the 200 years, the progression of some of the things that were used back in the early days on up, and if anybody’s interested in that type of thing, there going to want to see this down here.”

In addition to the farm machinery, Northern Indiana Power from the Past will also feature a variety of entertainment and flea market vendors.

Wilder says the main goal of the annual event is to help preserve some local agricultural traditions, from the time of horses and into the tractor era, “They’re slowly going away, and pretty soon the people that actually used these pieces of equipment, they’re pretty much gone at this point, except maybe in the Amish community. They still use a little bit of that type of equipment but not all of it. So it’s just because we have an interest in that, and we want to continue that part of it.”

If you can’t wait until the official start of this year’s Northern Indiana Power from the Past show tomorrow, tonight is the show’s preview night. Wilder says it will give visitors a taste of what’s going to come over the next four days, with some of the machines operating and a limited number of flea market vendors.

The complete power show schedule may be found at WinamacPowerShow.com.