A centennial quest your town keeps playing
Anniversaries collect a town's stories: old photos, family memories, the names on the buildings. A quest puts them back on the street, at the spot where each one happened, long after the celebrations end.
Ask about a quest for your townWe build it and take care of everything. Your historians and guides are welcome to join in.
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What can a town do for its anniversary that lasts?
Most anniversary plans are events: a parade, a concert, a weekend of celebrations. Then they end. A quest takes the stories the anniversary brings out and leaves them on the street, where residents and visitors can play them every day, in the anniversary year and long after.
How it fits your anniversary
- 1
The founding: the street or the crossing the town grew from
- 2
The first decades: the courthouse, the depot, the first school
- 3
The stories residents sent in for the anniversary
- 4
The final clue at the heart of the celebrations
Maryville, Tennessee: a Christmas quest through two centuries of downtown
Maryville commissioned a Christmas quest for its downtown: something families and visitors can play on Broadway any day in December, past the shops, taverns and restaurants that line the street.
- Quest
- A Timeless Christmas: The Twelve Gifts of Maryville
- Route
- 15 stops on and around Broadway, starting and ending at the town's Christmas tree
- Made for
- Families, residents and visitors in the Christmas season
- Status
- Being tested on the street, launching in December
The story
Players are guided by a merchant and former mayor who knows every corner of town. Through a brass spyglass, Maryville's old buildings come back into view as they once were. Each era leaves a puzzle to solve and a gift to collect: twelve in all, across two centuries of Christmases.
What makes it different
It follows the town's founding map. Maryville was laid out in 1795 as 120 lots, on fifty acres given by the Revolutionary War veteran John Craig, and almost every building on the route still stands on one of them. At most stops, players find a shop, tavern or restaurant that is open today and learn what stood on the same lot before it.
What players discover
3Raven
The temperance newspaper that helped persuade the town to give up its own charter in 1879, just to close the saloons
7Bella + Palace Theatre
The Palace, finished in 1886 by a German-born cabinetmaker who was also the first man in town to advertise as an undertaker
8Bank Corner
The corner of Blount County's first courthouse, where a young Sam Houston enlisted in 1813
10Federal Building
The house that sheltered a Union general's headquarters in the winter of 1863, later moved to make room for the post office
11Dandy Lions Gifts
The library a widow gave the town in memory of her husband, who died on Christmas Eve, 1929
How do we create a walking tour for our town?
We build every quest from scratch and take care of all of it: the research, the route, the clues, the story, the testing and the upkeep. If you want to be part of it, we build it together. Your team, local historians and guides join the work and pick the stories that matter most to your town. Residents discover something new about where they live, and visitors get a reason to stay the afternoon.
- 1A first call about your town and your occasion
- 2Research and a first route, with your historians and guides if you want them involved
- 3We write it and test it on the street, and you see it before launch
- 4Launch, with the material to promote it
No staff on the day. No tickets to sell. It runs every day of the year.
Made for the moments towns plan around
Questions towns ask us
Can we launch it on the anniversary date?
Yes, tell us the date on the first call and we plan the research, writing and testing backwards from it.
We are already collecting stories from residents. Can we use them?
That is the best material there is. We pick the ones that belong to a place you can stand in and build stops around them.
What happens after the anniversary year?
The quest stays open every day. The anniversary becomes something visitors and new residents can still play years later.
Your town is the next stop
Tell us about your town and the moment you're planning for. Alex, our founder, reads every request and replies by email.
- You send this form
- Alex replies by email
- A first call about your town and your occasion