May 12, 2013 By Antonia Cekada for The 5 min read

While recreating the original journey that many courageous pioneers traveled more than 200 years ago, the National Road Festival wagon train is expected to make its way through Addison around 3:30 p.m. Thursday.

Residents in the Somerset County town and surrounding areas are invited to gather this year to commemorate the wagon train’s 40th anniversary as part of festival, which also will celebrate the 202nd anniversary of Route 40, known as the Historic National Road.

“These volunteers are very brave to re-enact this journey every year,” said Joan Whetsell of the Old Petersburg-Addison Historical Society. “There are steep mountains the wagons must go up and down, and the highway can be a little dangerous with traffic.”

Nevertheless, the wagon train will be venturing the 90-mile stretch of road just as the original pioneers did so many years ago as they took settlers to the western frontier.

Although the whereabouts are not yet known, the “pioneers” will be staying the night somewhere in Addison, or nearby, and heading west toward Hopwood and Uniontown the following morning.

This year’s festival in Addison will offer many of the favorites, including food, crafts and music.

On Thursday and Friday, third-grade students will have the opportunity to attend the Humbertson School to get a glimpse of what learning was like in a one-room schoolhouse during the early 1900s. The children will be taught by a teacher dressed in period costume and will learn historical lessons about the area.

A play titled “Addison Apparitions” will be performed at 7 p.m. Saturday at Addison United Methodist Church on Main Street.

“We have about seven actors this year,” said Whetsell. “The play will be more like a monologue, as each character will tell their story.”

Bringing history alive, the characters, all dressed in costume, will take the stage to tell stories from the Civil War, Turkeyfoot Valley, the Johnstown Flood, the local tavern on the “Old Pike” and more.

The historical society is also sponsoring a 1860s-style baseball game to be played at 10 a.m. Saturday at the ball field behind the Addison cemetery.

All three teams — the Addison Mountain Stars, Pittsburgh Firestones and the Rockwood Frosty Sons of Thunder — will play America’s pasttime dressed in 1860s uniforms, with no gloves, a leather baseball and a wooden bat.

The top two teams will play each other in a single playoff game.

From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, the Participating Artists of the Turkeyfoot Highlands (PATH) will be set up beside Addison Lutheran Church. An array of art, including paintings, dolls, candles, photography, jewelry and more, will be showcased and for sale.

Also, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday in the Methodist church parking lot will be a food stand set by Country Lane Lambs, where lamb burgers are a popular treat. There also will be crafts and wool products.

Events on Sunday will include an outdoor church service from 9:15 a.m. to 10:15 a.m. at the Methodist church, where the “Blessing of the Pets” ceremony also will take place. The 14th annual Antique and Classic Car Show will be held from 11:15 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the parking lot of St. John’s Lutheran Church.

The Addison Museum and the Petersburg Tollhouse will be open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.Thursday and Friday, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday.

Just across the street from the Petersburg Tollhouse in Addison Community Park, the festival also will be celebrating the National Road, but with another slate of events.

The festival has been celebrating the National Road for more than 20 years, and this year the festival’s committee is planning and working hard to make it as big as it used to be after the festival began to “dwindle down in recent years,” said Marcy Kalasky, chairwoman of the Old Pike Days Festival Committee.

“Last year, we started to bring back more vendors for the festival and we had about 400 people show up,” said Kalasky. “This year, we’ve doubled our venders and we’re hoping to make the festival big again.”

From 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday and from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, children are invited to ride an Addison Volunteer Fire Department fire truck and try their skills on a rock climbing wall set up by the National Guard.

There also will be an array of vendors, from food and crafts to flea market items, and a special performance at noon Saturday by the Mountain Therapy Band, a bluegrass band that will perform at the festival for the second year in a row.

At dusk Saturday, there will be a special “sky lantern liftoff” to send illuminated lanterns into the sky as a memorial for loved ones.

“There’s a red, white and blue lantern for veterans and one that says ‘I love you’ in 100 different languages,” said Kalasky.

Lanterns can be purchased for $5 each during the festival, and all proceeds go to the committee for next year’s festival.