Powell’s downtown is getting a patriotic facelift to mark America’s 250th birthday. 

Thanks to a private grant, the city’s light poles in the downtown area are being decked out with new red, white and blue signs honoring the country’s semiquincentennial. They’re just one way the City of Powell will recognize the historic anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

“City staff is really looking to, I guess, decorate for the America 250,” City Administrator Zack Thorington said at a January council meeting, “because everybody across the country is celebrating.”

The timing works well, because the signs that had been adorning the light poles were showing their age. When they were installed back in 2017, the banners were a mixture of bright orange for Powell Panthers and bright red for Northwest College, Park County Travel Council board member Toby Bonner recalled. However, they’ve since faded into a kind of peach and pink, respectively, and “they’re pretty ugly now,” Bonner said at a January travel council meeting.

His colleagues on the travel council expressed a willingness to provide funding for the new banners, but in the meantime, the city secured a $4,000 grant from the Moyer Community Foundation to fund the signs. The nonprofit foundation is solely focused on bettering the Powell area, providing grants “to charitable, religious, scientific, literary, or educational purposes within and for the direct benefit of Powell and its residents.”

The city council voted unanimously to accept the Moyer Foundation’s gift at a Jan. 19 meeting and city streets crews started installing the new banners this week.