Virgil Dean can still envision his grandmother riding on floats that paraded through downtown Ottawa. Mike Amyx remembers seeing Miss America wearing a big black hat and pretty black dress in South Park. John Clinger recalls the stamps his mother made him collect commemorating the event.

And many, many others talk about the beards that men all across Kansas grew to celebrate the state’s 100th birthday.

On Saturday, Kansas turns 150 years old. And while plenty of festivities will take place commemorating the anniversary, they will undoubtedly pale in comparison to the year’s worth of celebrating Kansans did 50 years ago as they rang in the state’s centennial.

“It just seemed like a bigger event than what we are making of the 150th celebration,” said Clinger, who lives just outside of Lawrence and still recalls men in beards gathering near his hometown in southeast Kansas.

In 1961, the celebrations kicked off at the state Capitol with a 1,100-pound cake in the shape of Kansas. It was followed later that year by a cast of more than 1,000 local and national actors performing on seven stages the musical extravaganza “The Kansas Story.”

There was the Kansas Centennial Ball and Founders Day Banquet. Stamps, dolls, coins and even napkins were made to commemorate the event.

Here in Lawrence, the centennial was celebrated with a joint visit from Miss America and Miss Kansas. And Kansas University had its own theater production, “Hello, Kansas!”, whose opening performance the Lawrence Journal-World called a “dazzling local success.”

But it was the beards that stick in the minds of most Kansans.

An article in the Lawrence Journal-World proclaimed April 30 as the “last legal day” that men over 21 could shave in Kansas. Those who preferred not to grow whiskers had to purchase a $2 shaving permit button that was to be worn at all times in public.

In June, 82 men competed in a contest at the Hotel Eldridge for longest, prettiest, most unique, ugliest, thickest and most colorful beards.

Fifty years later mementos linger. Amyx, the current Lawrence mayor, has in his possession a thick scrapbook that chronicles a year of beards, prairie dresses and covered wagons.

Clinger still has his commemorative stamps. And Dean, a historian for the Kansas Historical Society, has held onto a wooden coin from that year.

“It really got me fascinated in history,” Dean said. Although he noted the Kansas history celebrated in 1961 was one that glorified the rugged pioneer spirit and tended to gloss over some of the less-becoming characteristics of the state’s beginnings.

“It was a different kind of celebration than what we agree we should have today,” Dean said. “Historians talk of commemorations, rather than celebrations.”