RivCo Museum To Celebrate Country's 250th Birthday With New Exhibit

RIVERSIDE, CA — An exhibit commemorating America's 250th birthday will open Friday evening in downtown Riverside, featuring artifacts, memorabilia and other items that showcase a historical record of the local area's growth over the last two centuries.

"Riverside: An All-American City — Celebration of America 250" will be unveiled at 6 p.m. Friday inside the Mission Inn Museum, drawing city officials and other guests to the east side of the Mission Inn Hotel property at Main and Sixth streets.

"The Mission Inn Foundation and all of Riverside joins in this observation because Riverside history is American history, and American history is Riverside history," City Councilman Philip Falcone said. "Together, these perspectives shape America's past, present and future."

Falcone's office provided some of the funds for the exhibit, in partnership with the Mission Inn Foundation, according to the city.

Among the items on display will be a Paul Revere "handbell," commonly used in the modern era for entertainment, including choirs, but also employed as alarms in previous centuries.

There will be wooden shields and portraits depicting Civil War campaigners from the local area, a bust of Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, mementos from the nine separate presidential visits that have occurred since the city's establishment in the 1870s and a retrospective on Bicentennial festivities from 1976.

The Mission Inn Museum exhibit on the U.S. Semiquincentennial, which will be free and open to the general public, is slated to run until Aug. 3.