New Year's Eve, 1869: A Great Day for Battle Creek
New Year’s Eve, 1869: A Great Day for Battle Creek New Year’s Eve was a very big deal in Battle Creek in 1869. The city had been incorporated 10 years earlier and continued to grow and grow. And on this New Year’s, the city’s 5,800 residents were buzzing as Hamblin’s Opera House opened. On December 31, 1869, an audience of 1700 attended a program of singers and instrumentalists. The building cost $40,000. A historical account published a few years later stated, “One of the chief attractions of Battle Creek is its commodious opera-house. Up to 1868, the city possessed no ...