The track was a six mile course around two sections, one mile south and two west of El Paso, returning to the present hard road intersection. No road was paved then, and the dust proved a great hazard.
Returned servicemen were guests of the community at a Victory Day celebration on June 18, 1919, for which the Boy Scout band provided the music. A free dinner for all the discharged soldiers and sailors, a ball game, fireworks and a pavement dance provided the fun.
In 1947 the new Chamber of Commerce sponsored a Corn Festival and coordinated the dates with the FFA livestock show also held in El Paso. It was a three- day celebration, combining some of the features of both the Play Days and the El Paso Fair. It was held September 11, 12 and 13 and was continued annually until after the festival in 1950 when it was decided to hold it on alternate years. In keeping with the centennial, a full week is planned for August 22-28, 1954, which will include a three- night pageant based on the community’s history. The slogan, Capital City of the Corn Belt, was adopted in connection with the first Corn Festival.
El Paso has always been enthusiastic about ball games of all sorts and supports football and basketball teams consistently. During the depression of the 1930's the community went wildly mad over softball, a night variation of baseball, then staged at the Rutledge farm northeast of town. League play was held for several seasons with eight teams competing, and in 1933 an all-star team was selected to compete in the Daily Pantagrapb's 1933 Central Illinois softball tournament. The El Paso team won all its elimination games by a one-run margin, beating out sixteen good teams for the championship. The game also had a revival following World War II on the high school grounds.
Perhaps the most famous of all El Paso High School teams was the 1905 baseball team coached by Principal Pricer. For two years this team defeated all opponents except one; a big Peoria high school defeated them by a narrow margin, but it was later learned the high school borrowed two or three college players who were believed good enough to hit Merritt Armstrong's excellent pitching. Had there been regular league play and rigid eligibility rules in 1905, that team would have probably won the Illinois high school championship.
Football was introduced at El Paso High School in 1915 by Paul M. Mulliken, with Edgar Vanneman the coach in 1916. Old teams in the days of Lyman Sturm and John Pleasants sustained bad injuries due to lack of coaching and tack of equipment, so the game had been forbidden for many years. The first 1915 team with Hurd Adams, Bob Barracks, Virgil Gordon and Dewey Webber taking the backfield duties was moderately successful, but the 1916 team surprised everyone by trouncing Peoria Manual 19 to 0, Normal High 37 to 30, and Fairbury 28 to 7. El Paso Township High's basketball teams were hard to beat
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