YATES CENTER — You wouldn’t know it by looking at it, but a small well on the northeast corner of Yates Center’s downtown square plays a part in the town’s history.
The hand-dug well proved back in the 1800s that if residents wished to locate there, they’d still have a source of water.
Wells were dug, at the insistence of landowner Abner Yates, to prove there was sufficient groundwater to put a community smack dab in the middle of Woodson County.
It’s why, after a pair of hotly contested elections in the early 1870s between Neosho Falls and Kalida townships, to determine the Woodson County seat, voters opted for Yates’s vision.
They voted to call Yates Center the county seat, the only such designation in the state for a town that hadn’t been created yet.
Yates, brother of Illinois Gov. Dick Yates, made sure it wasn’t vacant for long.
He donated much of his holdings to create the town, named in his honor, so much so that he died in poverty nearly 30 years later.
In addition to giving the county an entire block of ground for the courthouse, he gave the city a park, each church a building location, and his first two children born in town a lot each.
A friend eulogized at his funeral “Abner sacrificed a fortune to build up Yates Center and left it as his own monument.”
Oh, and that water well?
It’s never been dry in the subsequent century and a half, proof of Yates’s contention that this “was an area of living water.”
The retelling of Yates’s contributions will be among the plethora of attractions this weekend as Yates Center celebrates its 150th birthday.
THE sesquicentennial will be light on the traditional fare — there are no parades, or lines of food trucks or carnival rides — but promises to be an illuminating, enjoyable weekend of learning about how the community took shape.
“It’s in Yates Center, by Yates Center and for Yates Center,” said Kathe Hamman, who along with Susie Shaffer and Nancy Kelley were the driving forces in putting the celebration together.
The three-day festival begins Friday evening with a football jamboree hosted by Yates Center High school at historic DeLay Stadium, where a competitive football game hasn’t been played in 20 years.
The high school moved its games to the new football stadium when it opened in 2006.
