Midwest Old Threshers Reunion

Every Labor Day weekend, McMillan Park in Mount Pleasant fills with the hiss of steam and the smell of coal smoke. The Midwest Old Threshers Reunion began in nineteen fifty when a handful of Henry County farmers decided that the steam-powered machinery of their fathers deserved preservation rather than a junkyard. The first gathering was a modest affair compared with today's.

Decades later it has grown into one of the largest heritage festivals in the American Midwest, drawing more than one hundred thousand admissions over five days. Attendees can watch operating steam traction engines, antique tractors, a narrow-gauge steam railroad, and restored electric trolleys, all in working order. It is a living museum of the age when steam agriculture briefly turned the Great Plains into the breadbasket of the world.