By David DeRocco

 Just because a town is forgotten by history doesn’t mean it’s history is not exciting or worth remembering. That’s the inherent lesson to be learned when the 13^th Annual Rotary Club of Lincoln Lamplighter Tour shines its annual spotlight on another all-but-forgotten area of Lincoln Township.

 The Lamplighter Tour seamlessly combines mobile theatre production with an anecdotal walking tour designed to entertain and inform audiences about geographically and historically unique places in Lincoln, an event which has grown into one of the Rotary Club of Lincoln’s largest annual fundraisers.  This year’s tour shines a spotlight on Tintern, an area that Lamplighter marketing coordinator Sarah Bradshaw says has a history that belies its current status of importance in Lincoln.

 “Even the people who live around here don’t know where Tintern is, but I think it’s possibly the most exciting little town that was in Lincoln,” says Bradshaw, who has been involved with the Lamplighter Tour for all 13 years. “We were gob smacked when we started doing the research. We thought we’d have to take other stories from Lincoln and superimpose them to make them seem like Tintern stories. Then we found all these stories and we did a complete 180.”

Bradshaw says the Lamplighter initiative is a year-round activity that starts in January, when organizers decide on a theme before unleashing their team of writers and researchers to find all the information they can on the area chosen. What the team discovered about Tintern, an area adjacent to Lincoln’s Spring Creek, surprised and delighted organizers of this year’s tour.

 “The first thing we discovered was where the name came from, and it was an Englishman named John Perren,” explained Bradshaw. “He thought the land around where Tintern now lies reminded him of Tintern Abbey in South Wales.” Researchers also discovered many other threads of Tintern history – from local ties with former Governor Generals and the Louis Riel Rebellion to modern day methods of flash freezing fish filets – and have since woven all this information into four unique half-hour plays, which are staged at various intervals along the tour.

 “It’s great theatre, but even people who’ve lived here a long time have said they’ve learned more about local history through the Lamplighter series than they ever learned on their own,” said Bradshaw, who said heavy flooding of both Spring and 20 Mile Creeks used to turn Tintern into an island.  “Unless you hear stories growing up or unless you go through the archives, you just don’t know these things unless you do research on your own. Some of this long lost history is 150 years old.”

 Staging the annual tour initiative involves a collaborative effort between Rotary Club members and a team of over 100 volunteers, making it a unique theatre production according to Bradshaw. “All the performers are volunteers, they’re local people. This is probably the one show that I’ve ever been involved in that brings in lots of local people and families to participate. It almost becomes a family project from some of these people. Some have been with the Lamplighter tour for all 13 years. They’re not amateur actors, not theatre buffs, just people who support the Lamplighter tour and the Rotary Club.”

 The13th annual Rotary Club of Lincoln Lamplighter Tour "Spirits of Spring Creek" will include 22 shows over four days November 17 – 20, each tour lasting approximately two hours. Tickets are $35 and include post tour refreshments in Miss Nettle’s Tea Room.  Proceeds will help support the Rotary Club’s efforts to build amphitheater seating in front of the Bandshell in Charles Daley Park. For tickets and information, visit www.lamplightertour.com.