Collect Them All
Every stamp in your passport carries a face from Watseka’s history. Collect the set and you collect the story.
Retrace the path that built our town, one shop and one stamp at a time.
Carry a passport from shop to shop, collect a stamp at every stop, and work your way toward the prize drawings. Along the way you find out whose trail you have been walking your whole life. No lecture, no admission, just twenty good reasons to walk the street.
Paper or phone, your choice. Both count exactly the same.
Pick up a paper passport at the Santa House, or use the digital one on your phone. Both count exactly the same.
Step inside each participating shop, look around, and ask for your stamp. Every stamp counts toward a drawing.
Bring your passport back to the Santa House. A volunteer checks your stamps and enters you on the spot.
Pick one up at the Santa House in the First Trust parking lot. That is also where you finish: bring your stamped passport back, and a volunteer will tell you which drawing you have earned and take your entry right there. The passport is yours to keep.
Would rather not carry a booklet? Open the digital passport and scan the QR code at the counter of any participating business to collect that stamp automatically. Same twenty stops, same stamps, same drawings.
Open the Digital PassportThree tiers, based on how many stamps you gather. Drawings are held in the days following the event and winners are contacted directly.
10 stamps
15 stamps
All 20 stamps
Prizes to be announced.
Every stamp in your passport carries a face from Watseka’s history. Collect the set and you collect the story.
Every one of these is a stamp stop. Many will also have tables out front for the sidewalk sale, so the whole street becomes a marketplace for the day.
A one-of-a-kind combination of books and wine — the perfect cozy spot to browse, sip, and settle in for a while.
A charming shop with a country aesthetic — gifts, home decor, and unique finds for every occasion.
A nonprofit resale shop supporting the Harbor House mission — great finds at great prices while giving back to the community.
MyClozet2Yourz is dedicated to making our customers look good for Less.
Watseka's newest steakhouse and bar — premium cut steaks, burgers, pastas, and specialty drinks, with specials all week long. Perfect for date night, family gatherings, or game day.
Custom apparel, graphic design, and branded merchandise for businesses and organizations throughout Iroquois County.
A Downtown Watseka staple right next door to the Farmers Market. Great food, cold drinks, and a warm welcome any day of the week.
A father-and-daughter gallery in downtown Watseka specializing in original art — creating art for all.
On Third Street, between Walnut and Oak.
Two hundred years ago a young fur trader named Gurdon Hubbard set up a trading post where the Iroquois River meets Sugar Creek, the ground Downtown Watseka stands on today. The Potawatomi called him Pa-pa-ma-ta-be, or Swift-Walker, after he covered seventy-five miles on foot through the night to warn settlers of a threatened raid, arriving before dawn.
The path he wore north toward Chicago became known as Hubbard’s Trace. Settlers followed it, it widened into a road, and that road is now Illinois Route 1, still running straight through our downtown. Every storefront here sits on a two-hundred-year-old trade route.
But our town does not carry his name. It carries hers. Watchekee, “Daughter of the Evening Star,” was a Potawatomi woman and the daughter of the respected leader Shabbona. She married Hubbard here in 1826. After the 1833 Treaty of Chicago forced her people west, she walked back to this land again and again, thousands of miles over a lifetime of removals. In 1865, Middleport was renamed Watseka in her honor.
Most people here, visitors and lifelong residents alike, have never heard that story. Come collect it one stamp at a time.