National Park Service celebrates 100th birthday at Perry's Monument

PUT-IN-BAY - To honor Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry’s victory in the Battle of Lake Erie 100 years earlier and the century of peace with Britain and Canada that followed, the construction of Perry’s Victory and International Peace Memorial was commissioned in 1912 and completed by 1915.

One year later, then-President Woodrow Wilson signed an act creating the National Park Service, a new federal agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior tasked with protecting national parks and monuments, which totaled 35 at the time, on Aug. 25, 1916.

This weekend, national parks and monuments all across the country are celebrating the National Park Service’s 100th birthday in their own ways, Perry’s Victory on Put-in-Bay included.

Though the 352-foot tall monument was standing and in operation by 1915, it actually did not join the ranks of the national park system until more than two decades later.

According to the National Park Service, in June of 1936 Congress authorized then-President Franklin Roosevelt to establish “Perry’s Victory and International Peace Memorial National Monument” by proclamation, which he issued on July 6, 1936.

Since then and for the last 80 years, the National Park Service has been providing the management and supervision of Perry’s Victory.

“As of now, there are 413 national parks and we’re one of them,” said Barbara Fearon, superintendant of the memorial. “So we’ve been doing a lot of things this year to celebrate that centennial.”

Just as with any big birthday party, events included cake and candles — all 100 — as well as live musical performances, games, flares and fireworks. Trips to the highest observation deck in the entire National Park System, which the monument has the honor of being, are free throughout the entire celebration weekend.

Mike Koltunak, a park ranger from Adrian, Michigan, was giving live historical demonstrations of a flintlock musket, dressed as an American volunteer militia soldier, as many in Perry’s fleet were.

“The peace that has endured between the U.S., Britain and Canada is over 200 years old,” Koltunak said. “That is the true legacy of Perry’s Victory and International Peace Memorial.”

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