CHANDLER — As offi cials make final preparations for CityFest on Saturday, city administrator Jim Moffeit said cooling and misting fans are needed, and volunteers are encouraged to participate in the event.

“We’re having a hard time getting those fans, and we still need volunteers,” Moffeit said. “We could use all the help we can get.”

Organizers of Chandler’s 50th anniversary celebration have already lined up a 13-hour event that features a fireworks presentation, hot-air balloon launch, antique car show, and a disc golf tournament. They’ve also planned a watermelon seed-spitting contest.

“We’ll have some kind of prize for that,” Moffeit said. “But it’s more for fun than anything else. The contest will start around 2 or 3 p.m.”

Contest participants will be divided into women, men and children. They’ll have three tries, and the farthest seed spit will be recorded. The winner in each group will have spit his seed the farthest.

“We’ll take the best spit out of the three,” Moffeit said. “We’ll mark off a court for that.”

About 60 vendors are expected at CityFest, officials said. Booths are scheduled to open at 9 a.m. Music from Rick Daily is scheduled throughout the day. The balloon launch is planned for 5 p.m., and Tony Douglas and The Shrimpers is set to perform three hours later. A fireworks presentation will end the celebration.

Money raised during CityFest will help finance the creation of a city museum, the contents of which are housed at the Chandler Public Library, a branch of the Henderson County Clint W. Murchison Memorial Library.

Originally housed in a bookmobile, the Chandler branch was moved to Broad Street in 1983 and relocated again 13 years later to its current building at 900 State Highway 31. It is expected to become a city department by Chandler’s next fiscal year, but Henderson County commissioners have told the city it would continue to allocate $18,000 a year for the Chandler branch.

Chandler contributes over $8,000 a year to its branch. As a branch library, it is unable to receive state funding, grants and access to databases, Librarian Nancy Bertholf has said.

CityFest marks 50 years of Chandler’s incorporation.

Its history, though, dates to 1880 when the Texas and St. Louis Railway established a station on land donated about 31 years earlier by Alphonso Chandler, for which the town was renamed. It was originally called Stillwater.

Officials haven’t decided whether to expand the library or move the historical collection, which includes Sen. Ralph Yarborough, Jackie Kennedy, and other collections and memorabilia.

The late Yarborough, Democratic senator, was born in Chandler in 1903. He taught school in Henderson County, practiced law in El Paso and Austin, was a Texas judge and assistant attorney general, World War II veteran in the U.S. Army, and an author.

Yarborough was in Kennedy’s motorcade during the president’s assassination in 1963 in Dallas.

The Chandler Lions Club will direct traffic around and through the CityFest.

“The front parking lot will be blocked off completely, and the car show will be there,” Moffeit said. “The upper parking lot will be open. The majority of the parking will be sent through Winchester Place or on Martin Street, but we will have ample parking.”

Vendors will be asked to leave at 4 p.m.

To contribute to the library’s mini-museum during CityFest, call Bertholf at 903-521-5962 or 903- 849-4122.

To volunteer at the event, call City Hall at 903-849- 6853.