Lemont Girl Scout Creates Mobile App Sharing Local Historic Sites

LEMONT, IL — To celebrate the 150th anniversary of Lemont's incorporation and share local history, Lemont High School rising senior Amelia Dunkin has created a mobile app that provides a "location aware" walking tour of Lemont.

The project is for Amelia's Gold Award, the highest award in Girl Scouts. Amelia, who is a member of troop 70928 said the app was an intersection of two of her favorite fields, history and computer science.

"I knew I wanted to make something concerning those two fields from the beginning of the Gold Award process, but the idea for this specific app came to me when I learned about this town’s upcoming 150th anniversary celebration," Amelia told Patch.

Lemont just held a commemoration ceremony and street festival to celebrate the 150th anniversary this past weekend.

Amelia said she was also inspired by the walking tour that the Lemont Area Historical Society offered.

"My tour guide, Tricia O’Neill, did a fantastic job of diving into the rich, and largely unknown, history of Lemont," Amelia said. "I knew I needed to find a way to make sure that everyone would be able to learn about Lemont’s history, so that is why I decided to make my app a walking tour."

The app focuses on 31 historic sites in Lemont, split into three walking tours. One focuses on Lemont's downtown, another on its historic churches, and the last is a comprehensive tour with all the sites.

"My hope is that because this app is always available it will generate more interest in the Historical Society tours, which are an even better way to learn about Lemont’s history in depth," Amelia said.

Amelia worked with the historical society to learn about the sites, researched the sites with students in the LHS Rho Kappa history honors society, LHS art honors society provided the logo, and Zaaron Tyebjee provided narration.

Amelia said one of the hardest parts of the project "was dealing with the small errors that took down the entire program."

"In coding, one missing character can break everything, even if everything else is perfect," she said. "It’s like having an entire chain of dominoes that is perfectly spaced, except for the first piece that is too far away."

Another difficulty came in making sure the app met all of Apple's App Store requirements. Aemlia went through several rounds of submission and review before it was approved.

"The app itself took a few months, but with fundraising, learning Swift (the iOS programming language), and generating content, the project has taken almost a year to complete," she said.

The "Historic Lemont" app is available now in the App Store.