Historic Adventure Quest

Site Coordinates: N 40˚ 34.1314' W 089˚ 38.7631'

This is one of 10 caches (a hidden container) placed around historic sites in Pekin. These sites along with 10 other sites will provide letters or numbers you'll need to ultimately unscramble a prominent name and year in Pekin's history. Once you've obtained all 20 letters and numbers and unscrambled the name and year, submit your answer to be entered into a drawing for a locally 3-D printed "flat" Everett, $50 in Chamber Checks and other Pekin swag!

Please be courteous and aware of your surroundings (do not disrupt landscaping or destroy anything during your search) and place each cache back how you found it to ensure it remains hidden. All caches are on public property, placed with permission. Permission granted by the building owner. Please be stealthy & courteous!

Practice CITO (cache-in-trash-out: a way to help keep our environment clean) & happy caching! We hope you enjoy this historic tour of Pekin & participate in other events throughout 2024 to celebrate this milestone.

A special thank you to the United Way of Pekin for sponsoring the cache containers.

The 1974 Pekin Sesquicentennial volume devotes four paragraphs to the story of what was then known as the First National Bank and Trust Company of Pekin, which by 1974 had been operating for 87 years, having been founded in 1887 as the German-American National Bank.

The Sesquicentennial account of the bank’s history can be greatly augmented with records and resources in the Pekin Public Library’s Local History collection, but we’ll begin with the Sesquicentennial’s first paragraph:

“The oldest of Pekin’s present banks opened its doors on Wednesday, August 10, 1887 with $100,000 in capital, doing business from one room of a building owned by a Mrs. Margaret Keller on the corner of Court and Fourth Streets. The first officers of the then-German American National Bank were E. W. Wilson, a former Pekin mayor and one of the controlling powers in the American Distillery, president; Henry Feltman, a lumber dealer, vice-president; and A. H. Purdie, cashier. Deposits at the end of the first day of business amounted to $7,273.07.”