Amelia Dunkin Goes for Gold and Creates Historic Lemont Downtown Tour
Amelia Dunkin at Lemont 150 Festival | Photo by Molly Hebda Photography
What were you up to during your junior year of high school? Between studying for tests, playing sports, leading extracurriculars, and prepping for college, the last thing on most of our minds would have been revitalizing the local downtown and developing an app that tells the history of our hometown – bringing Midwestern history and America’s history into the 21st century.
“I took the historical walking tour [from LAHS] last fall and I was so inspired by my tour guide, Trisha O’Neill! I’ve lived here my entire life. My mom is from here. I knew of the canal but I never knew the full story,” says Amelia Dunkin, a local high school student and Girl Scout.
Nearing her senior year as a Girl Scout, Amelia was searching for ideas to earn the Gold Award. The prestigious honor is given to Girl Scouts that are able to find an issue in their community or world and use all of the skills and resources that they’ve learned so far to build a solution that creates lasting change.
The Historic Lemont Downtown Walking Tour is periodically offered through the Lemont Area Historical Society and Museum. The museum trains volunteers throughout the year through a rigorous process and when offered, they usually sell out within a few days. Hoping to provide more access to a younger, technologically driven generation, Amelia set out to turn the tour into a iOs app.
Amelia Dunkin | Photo by Molly Hebda Photography
Your typical teenager, filled with energy and the effervescent glee for life, Amelia got to work by enrolling in a UTM course, Swif, and used Apple’s XCode Program to build the app.
From there, she rallied her classmates in Rho Kappa, Lemont High School’s History Honor Society, to help write the stories, her friends on the Speech Team to record the audio, and graphic design students to make the logo.
“I learned a lot of project management skills. I never had worked with so many people – I think we had 35 volunteers at one time,” says Dunkin who worked tirelessly in the background to finish the coding and raise money for a Macbook. “I quickly learned that the only way to code for iOs is if you have the device. It took me a while to get my hands on one!”
After months of work, and a few attempts to get it approved by Apple and published in the app store, the Historic Lemont app was released.
The app features three walking tours: The Everything Tour for those who are ready for a leisurely stroll through Downtown, The Highlights Tour for if you only have a few minutes before an appointment, event, or restaurant reservation, and The Village of Faith Tour which features all of the iconic churches. Each site offers a visual, audio, and written description increasing the accessibility to a wider audience. The app will guide you by term using your phone’s GPS along the way.
With the hard work behind her and the Gold Award earned, Amelia is currently enjoying summer break and prepping for her senior year of high school. Her lifelong dream is to attend the University of Chicago and she’ll be busy this fall working on college applications.
Once her applications have gone out, she plans to get to work adding more tours in partnership with the Village of Lemont and Lemont Area Historical Society – we’ve already put in our request for a ghost tour.
Amelia would also love to partner with other towns and villages across America now that the basic coding of the app is set up. “It’d be nice to see other towns embrace their history and their story. I’m so grateful to have brought this to my hometown.”
Historic Lemont is available in the app store on Apple and coming soon to Android.
Take the walking tour today as part of Lemont Downtown’s 1 Day, 4 Ways: Live Like a Local, and tag us along the way!
