Catch a Glimpse of History in Poky 155 Documentary
Pocahontas celebrated a major milestone this past summer: a 155th Birthday Celebration! The delayed sesquicentennial celebration took place July 18 – 20, 2025. While it saw over 40 individual events and activities throughout the entire weekend, it concluded with a specially made documentary. The “Poky 155 Documentary” was played at the Rialto Theatre to an appropriate crowd of approximately 155 people.
The Pocahontas Chamber of Commerce headed up the 155th Celebration. Chamber Summer Specialist Eric Gerdes headed up the documentary, handling all of the editing of the project, with help from Chamber Executive Director Parker Aden in conducting interviews and collecting images to be used.
“This documentary is probably the most ambitious project I have worked on and I’ve worked on a lot of video projects throughout the years,” stated Gerdes. “The project was inspired by a half hour documentary about Pocahontas’s main street history from 1992. That video featured several local voices who told their personal stories and shared memories about main street Pocahontas. This video is twice as long and goes beyond the scope of Pocahontas’s Main Street.”
“Eric did a phenomenal job with the project,” recalled Aden. “It captures some fun stories and events of Pocahontas throughout the decades. Eric worked really hard to edit everything together over only a couple weeks to have it ready for the Celebration. Everyone on the Chamber Board was delighted with how it turned out, and several community members let us know how much they enjoyed it too.”
The documentary features stories from locals about all sorts of town happenings, projects, traditions, moments, and celebrations throughout the years in Pocahontas. It is segmented into different themes and features a fun post credit scene. After being played at the Rialto Theatre for the remainder of that week, it was eventually published to the Chamber’s YouTube.
“Parker and I interviewed several notable community members,” shared Gerdes. “Including but not limited to The Kaleidoscope Family workers, Joan Reinhart (Grand Marshal of the 155th celebration parade), Mayor Gruber, James Roetman, Andrea Christians, and Carol Hallman – who was featured in the original video. It was fascinating to hear everyone’s unique stories and perspective growing up, living in, or working in the Pocahontas community.”
Besides the documentary, a time capsule was sealed in September to preserve Pocahontas history. It will be opened in 45 years, for the 2070 Centennial Celebration. The time capsule is stored in a fire proof safe at the Pocahontas Public Library, with Parker Aden and The Record-Democrat Newspaper having backup boxes of the time capsule in their possession. The Chamber also wanted to have a new landmark that would live past just the Celebration weekend, so they funded a beautiful mural at Heritage Park created by ShellRae Design.
The Celebration itself saw over a thousand people having a great weekend in Pocahontas. Running three days with multiple activities in addition to the County Fair schedule of events, it was the biggest Celebration that the Pocahontas community had seen in a long time.
“The documentary was the best way we could conclude the weekend,” affirmed Aden. “And I was so glad when that time came to sit back and enjoy it on the big screen of the Rialto!”
You can view the full documentary on the Pocahontas Chamber’s YouTube. Be sure to keep an eye on the Rialto Theatre’s Facebook page as well, as sometimes the documentary is brought back for a special screening.
